Seismic pressures on rigid cantilever walls retaining linear poroelastic soil: An exact solution

Abstract

The dynamic response of a water-saturated linear poroelastic soil layer over bedrock retained by a pair of rigid cantilever walls to a horizontal seismic excitation is obtained analytically–numerically under plane strain conditions. Hysteretic damping in the soil skeleton may also be present. The problem is solved in the frequency domain and its exact solution is obtained analytically. This is accomplished with the aid of Fourier series along the horizontal direction and solution of the resulting system of ordinary differential equations to obtain the amplitudes of the soil skeleton displacements and the pore water pressure. Soil displacements and stresses, pore water pressure as well as wall pressures and resultant forces are explicitly presented. Their variation with frequency, hysteretic damping, porosity and permeability is numerically obtained and compared against an approximate solution, to assess the degree of validity of the assumptions.