Abstract
At present, the calculation of active earth pressure behind retaining walls is mainly based on the hypothesis that the fracture surface of rolling earth behind retaining walls is straight-running through wall heels. However, most experiments have proven that this hypothesis is false. In this study, active earth pressure behind retaining walls under seismic loading was discussed from the perspective of stress deflection. Stress on soil layer behind the vertical retaining wall was analyzed by quasi-static method. Then, the expression of seismic angle of rupture was proposed by referring to the balance of horizontal forces and changes with wall height. On this basis, the calculation formulas of active earth pressure, seismic active earth force, total moment at the wall and the point of application of active thrust from the base of wall were acquired by solving this balance equation. Calculated results were compared with test data and results of other methods. The rationality of the proposed method was verified. Thus, the proposed method is applicable to multi-layered filling behind the retaining wall.
Highlights
Due to frequent earthquakes that have happened recently, retaining wall failures caused by earthquake occur occasionally
These research methods were based on the hypothesis that the fracture surface is a surface running through the wall heel under seismic loading
1) Stresses on soil layers of the vertical retaining wall under seismic loading were analyzed by quasi-static method with considerations to soil stress-deflection
Summary
Due to frequent earthquakes that have happened recently, retaining wall failures caused by earthquake occur occasionally. Active earth pressure behind a retaining wall has a linear distribution, and the point of resultant action is one-third of the wall height above ground. Choudhury and Singh [5], Saran and Gupta [6], Shukla et al [7], Ghosh [8], Sharma and Ghosh [9], Lin et al [10] improved the M-O formula and reported the calculation formula of nonlinear distributed active earth pressure under seismic loading These formulas did not consider the active earth stress-deflection after the retaining wall. To address the aforementioned issues, a novel approach for calculating the active earth pressure on rigid retaining walls with considerations to the seismic load and soil stress-deflection was proposed. The predictions of the proposed method were verified against results of other previously published methods
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