Excavation in soft ground may cause notable deflection of an earth retaining wall, reaching to a considerable depth. This mode of lateral load distribution can not be predicted by the conventional design technique. This paper compiles the forty cases of deflection of earth retaining wall as observed in soft ground, and seeks inversely for the load distribution to explain the observed mode. Regarding the first stage of excavation, for example, it was found out that the depth of maximum lateral load must be taken two or three times as deep as the excavation bottom to explain the observed data.
