RANKlNE'S ANALYSIS OF ACTIVE AND PASSIVE PRESSURES IN DRY SANDS

Abstract

This paper makes use of Rankine's analysis to find the active and passive stresses acting on any plane in a homogeneous isotropic dry sand mass. The results are applied to the slanting wall problems. Both active and passive stresses are linearly distributed along the wall. As a result, the active and passive thrusts act at lower one-third height of wall. In general, Rankine's solution is comparable to the Coulomb's for active case; but, for passive case, Rankine's thrusts are usually lower than Coulomb's, because the direction of thrust obtained in the Rankine's analysis is not comparable to the Coulomb's direction of thrust when using a conventionally defined friction angle.