Active Earth Pressure on Retaining Wall Supporting c-Φ Backfill Considering Rayleigh Wave

Abstract

Study of seismic active earth pressure is very much important for the safe design of retaining walls in the earthquake prone area. The earlier analytical methods provides the methodology of computation of seismic active earth pressure without considering the effects of Rayleigh waves though it constitutes about 67 % of the total seismic energy. In this present analysis a new methodology is proposed by considering the Rayleigh wave along with the shear wave velocity (V s ) and primary wave velocity (V p ). Using the limit equilibrium principle, a methodology is developed to calculate the pseudo-dynamic active earth pressure on the back of battered-faced retaining walls supporting cohesive-frictional backfill. Results are presented in both tabular and graphical non-dimensional form. Effects of a wide range of variation of parameters like wall inclination angle (α), wall friction angle (δ), soil friction angle (Φ), horizontal and vertical seismic accelerations (k h , k v ) have been studied on the seismic active earth pressure coefficients.