Development of pressure and deformation at a quai wall in the Hamburg harbour

Because of the further deepening of the harbor basins specially in the German seaports the retaining wall construction will gain importance in future. The larger height of the constructions and the application of fundamentally other construction methodologies raise the question whether the current design codes and designing rules still deliver a correct description of the structure loading. Therefore measurements and calculations have been carried out at the O’Swaldkai at the Hamburg harbour since 1992 by the Institute for soil mechanics and foundation engineering of the Technical University of Braunschweig (IGB-TUBS) required by the River and Harbour administration, Hamburg.