Dynamic pressures on a pair of rigid walls retaining poroelastic soil

Abstract

This work deals with the evaluation of the dynamic pressures and the associated forces on a pair of rigid vertical cantilever walls retaining a uniform, fully saturated poroelastic layer of soil. Hysteretic damping in the soil skeleton may also be present. Wall pressures and forces are induced by horizontal ground shaking harmonically varying with time and spatially invariant. The problem is solved analytically under conditions of plane strain. The governing partial differential equations of motion, after separation of variables and the simplifying assumptions of zero vertical normal stresses and zero horizontal variation of vertical displacements, reduce to a system of two ordinary differential equations for the amplitudes of the solid skeleton horizontal displacement and the pore water pressure, which are easily solved. The parameters examined include the ratio of the distance between walls to the height of the retained soil material and the soil material properties such as porosity, permeability and damping. The comprehensive numerical data presented indicate that the displacements, wall pressures and resultant forces are highly dependent on the distance between the walls for any values of porosity and permeability.