Stability of non-vertical waterfront retaining wall supporting inclined backfill under earthquake and tsunami

• Stability of waterfront retaining wall subjected to earthquake and tsunami.
• Seismic earth pressure was calculated using advanced pseudo-dynamic approach.
• The hydrostatic and hydrodynamic pressures were also incorporated.
• Present results compare well with very few available existing methods.
• Proposed closed-form design solution and charts can be used for design.

The stability analysis has been carried out for generalized non-vertical waterfront retaining wall supporting inclined backfill under combined action of earthquake and tsunami forces. Closed-form design solutions for factor of safety against sliding have been obtained using limit equilibrium method. For estimating seismic passive earth pressure and the wall inertia force, the pseudo-dynamic approach has been adopted. Different methods available in literature are used to estimate tsunami wave pressure and hydrodynamic pressure. It has been observed that parameters like seismic accelerations in both horizontal and vertical directions, time period, soil and wall friction angles, wall batter, ground inclination, pore pressure ratio, tsunami wave height have significant effect on the sliding stability of the waterfront retaining wall under combined action of earthquake and tsunami. Comparison of results with available results in literature for special case of vertical waterfront retaining wall supporting horizontal backfill has indicated a very good agreement. It is expected that the proposed design charts and tables presented in this paper will be helpful for the design engineers to design waterfront retaining wall against sliding mode of failure under combined action of earthquake and tsunami.