Seismic Passive Earth Pressure on Walls with Bilinear Backface Using Pseudo-Dynamic Approach

Abstract

By using pseudo-dynamic approach, a method has been proposed in this paper to compute the seismic passive earth pressure behind a rigid cantilever retaining wall with bilinear backface. The wall has sudden change in inclination along its depth and a planar failure surface has been considered behind the retaining wall. The effects of a wide range of parameters like soil friction angle, wall inclination, wall friction angle, amplification of vibration, variation of shear modulus and horizontal and vertical seismic accelerations on the passive earth pressure have been explored in the present study. For the sake of illustration, the computations have been exclusively carried out for constant wall friction through out the depth. Unlike the Mononobe-Okabe method, which incorporates pseudo-static analysis, the present analysis predicts a nonlinear variation of passive earth pressure along the wall.