Estimation of Seismic Earth Pressures Against Rigid Retaining Structures with Rotation Mode

The evaluation of seismic earth pressures is of vital importance for the earthquake resistant design of various retaining walls and infrastructures. It is one of the key research subjects in soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering. In engineering practices, the magnitude and distribution of seismic earth pressures are greatly affected by the mode and amount of wall displacement. However, classic Mononobe-Okabe solution can only compute the seismic earth pressures at the limit state and doesn’t consider the effect of the mode and amount of wall movement on the seismic earth pressure. In this paper, the formation mechanism of earth pressures against rigid retaining wall with RTT and RBT mode is revealed based on the previous studies and a new method is proposed to calculate the seismic earth pressures in such conditions. Corresponding formula are derived and computer code is written to calculate the seismic earth pressure distribution based on the proposed methodology. Variation of seismic earth pressure coefficient for the rigid retaining wall with RTT and RBT mode is calculated and discussed. In addition, the effectiveness of the method is confirmed by the experimental results.