Seismically Induced Lateral Earth Pressures on a Cantilever Retaining Wall

Response and Modeling of Cantilever Retaining Walls Subjected to Seismic Motions

“…To assess the applicability of simplified techniques that were developed for estimating dynamic earth pressures and permanent wall displacement of gravity retaining walls to cantilever walls, comparisons of the results from the finite difference and simplified analyses are presented below. The reader is referred to Ebeling and Morrison (1992), Green et al (2003), and Green and Michalowski (2006) for more detailed discussions about the simplified techniques used.…”

“…The dynamically induced lateral earth pressures acting on the stem of the wall were computed using finite difference. The corresponding lateral earth pressure coefficients ( K FD ) were computed from these stresses using the following expression (Green et al, 2003): where P FD is the resultant of the finite difference computed stresses acting on the stem of the wall; γ t is the total unit weight of the backfill; H is the height of the wall; and k v is the vertical inertial coefficient (assumed to be zero). inherently assumes that the lateral stress distribution is triangular, with the base of the triangle at the depth of the base of the wall.…”

2005 NBCC-based seismic design of gravity retaining walls

“…In the analysis of flexible retaining walls, it was found that at relatively low seismicity accelerations the induced pressures were in general agreement with those pressures predicted by Mononobe-Okabe method. However, at relatively mid-size accelerations similar to those expected in regions of moderate seismicity, the pressures were larger than those predicted by the Mononobe-Okabe method (Green et al 2003). The reason for these differences might be related to the relative flexibility of the cantilever wall.…”