Granular materials have a tendency to exhibit an arching effect by which the load is transferred from yielding parts to adjacent stationary parts. Retaining walls are among those structures that the soil arching plays an important role in the distribution of earth pressures. This paper briefly reviews the development of soil arching theory and its application to different geotechnical projects....

in this paper, based on soil plasticity and pseudo-static methods, necessary equations have been derived for determination of total active thrusts due to layered backfill on rigid retaining walls using limit equilibrium approach. for this purpose, the reaction force applied on the failed wedge due to granular backfill has been determined using kotter’s equations. the total lateral thrust and th...

This paper reports on the application of a simulated annealing algorithm to the minimum cost design of reinforced concrete retaining structures. Cantilever retaining walls are investigated, being representative of reinforced concrete retaining structures that are required to resist a combination of earth and hydrostatic loading. To solve such a constrained optimisation problem, a modified simul...

Abstract The present work deals with assessment of earthquake-induced displacement the base restrained retaining walls (RW’s). A detailed and rigorous finite element (FE) investigation has been carried out following shaking table experiments on a scaled-down RW model. FE simulations were performed by conducting several nonlinear time history analyses two-dimensional (2D) plane strain model prot...