Active earth thrust on walls supporting granular soils: Effect of wall movement

Abstract

The methods currently used in the design practice of retaining walls supporting granular soils (sand, gravel, silt, and their mixtures) assume that the soil friction angle and, consequently, the active earth pressure coefficient KA are independent of wall movement. However, the mobilized friction angle inside the retained soil in reality first reaches a peak value and then decreases towards to the critical state value as shear strain increases with wall movement. This study aims to investigate the development and evolution of the active earth pressure by modeling the soil mechanical behavior in a realistic way in a series of finite element analyses. Based on the numerical results, an equation is proposed for the estimation of KA as a function of the initial relative density and the wall crest displacement.