Abstract
Active and passive earth pressure coefficients by a kinematical approach
Highlights
The problem of active and passive earth pressures acting against rigid retaining structures has been extensively studied in the literature since Coulomb.[1]
This variational limit equilibrium method may be extended to the active earth pressure problem, and the same conclusions remain valid in this case: (a) A log-spiral failure surface may be obtained from a variational maximisation procedure
The aim of this paper is to show that the upper-bound method in limit analysis for a rotational log-spiral failure mechanism gives rapid and good predictions for both active and passive earth pressures
Summary
The problem of active and passive earth pressures acting against rigid retaining structures has been extensively studied in the literature since Coulomb.[1]. A variational analysis has been applied to the passive earth pressure problem by Soubra et al.[2] Their approach is based on a limit equilibrium method, and the solution provides a log-spiral failure surface. It should be emphasised that their method, employed in this paper, can be categorised as an upper-bound in the framework of limit analysis where a rotational rigid body movement is considered. This variational limit equilibrium method may be extended to the active earth pressure problem, and the same conclusions remain valid in this case:
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