Foundation Design For The Marina Barrage, Singapore

Singapore’s Marina Barrage is a major government project to provide a multi-purpose urban reservoir integrating flood control, water supply and lifestyle attractions in the heart of the city of Singapore. The SGD$226 million project includes the construction of a 305m long barrage at the mouth of the Marina Channel to form a freshwater reservoir and will play a pivotal role in enhancing Singapore’s water supply.

This paper describes how the engineering challenges for the geotechnical aspects of this project were addressed, including the detailed geotechnical analyses and design of the Barrage piled foundation, comprising over 275 bored piles of diameters ranging from 1 m to 1.5 m. With such a large number of piles of different diameters, the challenge was to simulate the pile group interaction effects under both lateral and vertical loading (including negative skin friction due to the consolidating soft Marine Clay deposits) in order to optimise the pile group design.