Pseudo-Dynamic Evaluation of Failure Surface and Seismic Active Earth Pressure

Abstract

Retaining wall is a structure used for supporting the soil mass laterally so that the soil can be retained at different levels on the two sides of it. Design of retaining wall needs the complete knowledge of Earth Pressure for both Active and Passive conditions. In the present work, an effort has been made to develop a formulation for critical wedge angle and thus seismic active pressure behind a vertical retaining wall supporting  -backfill using pseudo-dynamic method. The effect of various parameters viz. time, shear and primary waves, time period of earthquake ground motion, angle of internal friction , angle of wall friction (δ), seismic acceleration co-efficients (k_{h ,} k_v) are also taken into account to provide the variation of seismic active earth pressure.