Application of admissible stress fields for computation of passive seismic force in retaining walls

In this paper, the lower-bound techniques of limit analysis are applied to obtain lateral earth pressures of rigid retaining walls subjected to earthquake forces. The well-known Mononobe–Okabe analysis is a direct modification of the coulomb wedge analysis. In this analysis, the earthquake effects are replaced by a quasi-static inertia force whose magnitude is computed on the basis of the seismic coefficient concept. This paper is describing an analytical solution to investigate the lateral force affect on retaining walls, using mathematical relations based on a lower bound limit analysis method. The lower bound of the exact solution can be obtained by use of different admissible stress fields in different regions of the media divided by stress discontinuity surfaces. This process is included in calculation of the direction and magnitude of passive lateral earth pressure. Numerical results of the proposed algorithm are presented in some practical dimensionless graphs.