Review of Studies on Retaining Wall's Behavior on Dynamic / Seismic Condition
Current theories, experimental investigations and numerical findings for retaining walls subject to dynamic excitations are reviewed. Brief features of each method, and experimental and numerical methods are introduced and compared. Tables are listed after each section for a clear and brief view of methods in a categorized manner. Conclusive comments plus current concerns and future expectations of this area are made at last. This review aims at shedding light on the development and concepts of different researches in dynamic retaining wall design and analysis.
SEISMICALLY INDUCED MOVEMENT OF RETAINING WALLS
In recent years, new seismic design methods for gravity retaining walls, based on the earthquake-induced permanent displacement of the wall, have been proposed. These methods generally ignore the effects of ground motion amplification in the backfill on the seismic behavior of the wall. In the present paper, results obtained with a finite element model capable of taking into account the amplification of ground motion in the backfill, while computing permanent distortions, are presented. Implications of these results for design are also considered.
Dynamic Response of Soil Pressure on Retaining Wall
SYNOPSIS An effective numerical method for the dynamic analysis of soil pressures on retaining walls has been proposed. In this approach, the retaining wall is considered as a vertical flexible beam and the soil is assumed to be a linear-elastic material with hysteretic damping. The analysis procedure of proposed method, compared with some alternative numerical methods, (such as finite element method), will greatly reduce the computational effort. The properties and the significance of some model parameters, such as hysteretic materials damping and stiffness ratio of flexible beam and soil, are also investigated. As a special case when the retaining wall is considered as a rigid structure, the exact solution of the soil pressure on the walls can be obtained.