Performance of an anchored sheet pile wall on the CN Rail line, Boston Bar, British Columbia

Abstract

The performance of a 6 m high anchored steel sheet pile retaining wall, constructed to allow CN Rail to twin its main-line track, is presented. The instruments installed gave measurement of the load and its variation along the tieback anchors; the distribution of the strain along the height of the wall which allowed an earth-pressure distribution to be postulated; and the lateral deflection of the wall. The earth-pressure distributions, inferred from the field measurements, were adequately predicted using the Terzaghi and Peck recommendation coupled with the Boussinesq procedure to account for the train loads. The best-fit lateral pressure distributions were in turn used to calculate displacement profiles by modelling the wall as a beam. The results matched the measured profiles reasonably well, thus endorsing a simplified technique for predicting displacements of an anchored wall. Key words : retaining wall, tieback, earth-pressure distribution, wall deflection, railway.