A bi‐fidelity inverse analysis method for deep excavations considering three‐dimensional effects

Abstract Inverse analysis methods are commonly used in braced excavations for improved deformation predictions. This paper proposes a bi‐fidelity ensemble randomized maximum likelihood (BF‐EnRML) method for efficient inverse analyses of deep excavations considering the three‐dimensional effects. The bi‐fidelity (BF) model is developed by the low‐fidelity model (i.e., two‐dimensional finite element model, 2D FEM) and the high‐fidelity model (i.e., 3D FEM) for a balance between efficiency and accuracy. A large number of 2D FEMs are first used to explore the relationship between soil parameters and wall deflections. A few 3D FEMs are then performed to calibrate the discrepancy between 2D‐3D deflections caused by the inability of 2D FEM to consider the three‐dimensional effects. The constructed BF model serves as the forward model in inverse analysis. The soil parameters are updated by incorporating the monitoring data based on EnRML and further used to predict wall deflections in later stages. A hypothetical excavation and a real project are studied to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The results show that the BF model can provide wall deflection predictions close to those calculated from 3D FEM while using a computational cost of 2D FEM. The BF‐EnRML method can efficiently update the soil parameters and improve the wall deflection predictions. Moreover, factors affecting the accuracy of the BF model are studied, including the number of required 3D FEMs, the distance from the evaluated wall section to the excavation corner, the number of data points along the wall depth, and the number of excavation stages.