Abstract
The general assumption of linear variation of earth pressures with depth on retaining structures is still controversial; investigations are yet required to determine those distributions of the passive earth pressure (PEP) accurately and deduce the corresponding centroid location. In particular, for rigid retaining walls, the calculation of PEP is strongly dependent on the type of wall movement. This paper presents a numerical analysis for studying the influence of wall movement on the PEP distribution on a rigid retaining wall and the passive earth thrust location. The numerical predictions are remarkably similar to existing experimental works as recorded on scaled test models and full-scale retaining walls. It is observed that the PEP varies linearly with depth for the horizontal translation, but it is nonlinear when the movement is rotational about the top of the retaining wall. When rotation is around the top of the wall, the resultant of PEP is located at a depth that varies between 0.164 and 0.259H of the wall height measured from the base of the wall, which is lesser than 1/3 of the wall height. The passive earth thrust location is highly affected by the soil–wall friction angle, especially when the friction angle of the backfill material increases. Despite the herein presented results, further experiments are recommended to assess the corresponding numerical predictions.
Sand deformation mechanisms mobilised with active retaining wall movement
