Abstract
The seasonal variation and climatic changes play a significant role that affects the stresses exerted on a retaining wall, and the state of stresses in the soil mass behind the wall especially for highly expansive soil. These stresses resulted in the wall moving either away or towards the soil. In this study, a laboratory physical model of the retaining wall formed of a box having (950×900×600) mm dimensions with one side representing the wall being developed. After the soil being laid out in the box in specified layers, specified conditions of saturation and normal stresses were applied. The wall is allowed to move horizontally in several distances (0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0 , 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0) mm, and the stresses being measured, then the vertical loading was released. The main measured variables during the tests are; the active and passive earth pressures, vertical movement of the soil, total suction and time. Results showed that the lateral earth pressure along the depth of the wall largely decreased when wall moved away from the soil. Total suction was slightly affected during wall’s movement. At unloading stage, the lateral earth pressure decreased at the upper half of wall height, but increased at the other wall part. Total suction was increased at all depths during this stage.
Highlights
Retaining walls mainly used as lateral support to soil and rock
The pressures exerted on these structures can be divided into three categories: at rest, active and passive earth pressures
Expansive soil could exert a lateral pressure on retaining wall, when suction changes within soil due to rainfall and seasonal change of water table
Summary
Retaining walls mainly used as lateral support to soil and rock. Cantilever retaining wall is one of the common types of retaining structures. The effect of lateral swelling pressure exerted on the retaining wall when the clay soil is used as a backfill material was ignored. Several studies were conducted on laboratory physical model of a retaining wall using granular soil as a backfill material [4, 6, 9, 10, 13, 17, 19, 20]. Two holes were made on the back of the box at depths of 100 and 345 mm These holes were used to install calibrated water probes which have the capacity of 239 kPa. The probes were used for measuring the total suction of the soil. Figure (2) shows a schematic diagram of the model with their instrumentation devices
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