SOILS AND FOUNDATIONS
Print ISSN : 0385-1621
A LOWER-BOUND APPROACH TO ACTIVE AND PASSIVE EARTH PRESSURE PROBLEMS
KATSUHIKO ARAIRIE JINKI
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JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

1990 Volume 30 Issue 4 Pages 25-41

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Abstract

Active and passive earth pressures acting on retaining walls are known to be a complicated function of many factors, for instance, the cohesion and friction angle of backfill material, wall friction, and geometries of wall and backfill. Conventional theories based on stability analysis, e.g., Coulomb and Rankine methods which are now quite widely used, cannot necessarily take all these factors into consideration. Firstly this paper develops a numerical procedure for calculating active and passive earth pressures against rigid retaining walls, which enables to take account all these factors affecting active and passive pressures, and which presents full information about the earth pressures. Secondly, by comparing the procedure with Coulomb and Rankine methods, this paper aims to clarify the mechanical and practical meanings of these classical methods. Based on the lower-bound theorem in the theory of plasticity, the procedure searches the minimum and maximum values respectively of active and passive thrusts within the limitations of satisfying the equilibrium equations and non-failure condition. To represent these conditions, the earth pressure and the stress field within backfill are discretized in a similar manner as in the finite element method. On the problem formulation, two methods are considered depending on whether a potential slip surface is assumed or not. When assuming a slip surface, arises a serious difficulty that the criterion for locating the critical slip surface is contrary to the criterion for determining the stress field. When assuming no slip surface, it is shown that the proposed procedure provides the reasonable solutions of active and passive pressures and that the boundary condition of wall and backfill movements has an essential meaning in the analysis. The procedure is applied to a number of case studies, where comparisons are made thoroughly with classical theories. Through the development of the procedure, many important aspects in the earth pressure problems are clarified.

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© The Japanese Geotechnical Society
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