Numerical study of seismic earth pressures acting against a vertical retaining wall in frictional soil

Abstract

The seismic earth pressures with presence of water, acting against a vertical retainingwall are often a function of many parameters. In the case of saturated sands, the earthquakecauses failure of the retaining wall resulting by soil liquefaction. The theoretical methods for thecalculation of seismic earth pressures available in literature remain unable to solve the envisagedproblems. In this study the finite element code PLAXIS is used to evaluate the active earth pressureacting against a vertical rigid retaining wall. The soil is modeled by an elasto-plastic model with aMohr-Coulomb yield criterion. In this study, several parameters have been considered in order toevaluate the effect of soil acceleration with transitory flow and hydrostatic groundwater. Theresults have been compared with those obtained by the pseudo-dynamic and pseudo-staticapproaches. The results show the influence of the seismic action on the earth pressures.