New procedure for active earth pressure calculation in retaining walls with reinforced cohesive-frictional backfill

A new approach is suggested to determine the active earth pressure on retaining walls with reinforced and unreinforced cohesive-frictional backfill based on the horizontal slices method. A 4n formulation for unreinforced backfill and a 5n formulation for reinforced backfill are introduced and the tensile forces of the reinforcements and angle of failure wedge are calculated. The proposed method shows that the variation of active earth pressure by the depth of the wall in cohesive-frictional soils has a non-linear distribution. Also, the point of application of the pressure always shifts to the lower two-thirds of the wall height. The angle of failure wedge for cohesive-frictional soils increases linearly with an increase in the cohesive strength of the soil. A comparison of the analytical results obtained from the proposed method with those of previous research and AASHTO method results shows a negligible difference. The analytical method presented can be used to calculate the active earth pressure, tensile force of reinforcements and angle of failure wedge for unreinforced and reinforced walls in cohesive-frictional soil.