In previous studies

Mohr-Coulomb criterion is mainly used to simulate soil behaviors in the analysis of overall stability of deep excavations using strength reduction method. However

the deformations obtained by numerical method using Mohr-Coulomb criterion can’t coincide with the measured results well

which may lead to an unreasonable safety factor. So Hardening-Soil criterion is introduced to simulate the excavation process using software Plaxis; and the displacement abruptness of characteristic node is used to judge the stability of the pit. By analyzing the relationship between the displacements of different nodes and coefficient of strength parameter reduction

the soil node near excavation surface in front of wall is selected as the reasonable point in convergence judgment. The safety factor obtained using Hardening-Soil criterion agrees well with the result by using the limit equilibrium method. Whereas the safety factor obtained using Mohr-Coulomb criterion is much larger. Finally

the influences of many factors

such as width of pit

thickness of weak soil beneath the base of excavation

depth of embedment and stiffness of retaining wall on overall stability are investigated intensively; and the results obtained by using two different constitutive models are compared