Relaxation effect in retaining wall on passive mode

Abstract

Retaining wall, sheet pile, anchor and footing foundation are some of important structures and close relationship with the stability problems. The stability analyses usually use to find safety factor of those structures. In the retaining wall problems, numerous investigators have evaluated the earth pressure only on active or passive mode by separately. While in under construction, before retaining wall is operated on passive condition, the relaxation process (active condition) is acted for a certain time. In this paper attempt to explain the effect of relaxation process on the retaining wall problem. The experiments were conducted on the air-dried Toyoura sand in plane strain condition and height of sand mass was 10 cm. To make relaxation process was by pulling the wall until a certain relaxation displacement (Rd before the wall was moved toward the sand mass. The peak passive thrust and the zone of localization until Rd = 0.2 mm was similar. There was no influence of relaxation until Rd = 0.2 mm.