Simulating Seismic Response of Cantilever Retaining Walls
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 133, Issue 5
Abstract
Many failures of retaining walls during earthquakes occurred near waterfront. A reasonably accurate evaluation of earthquake effects under such circumstance requires proven analytical models for dynamic earth pressure, hydrodynamic pressure, and excess pore pressure. However, such analytical procedures, especially for excess pore pressure, are not available and hence comprehensive numerical procedures are needed. This paper presents the results of a finite-element simulation of a flexible, cantilever retaining wall with dry and saturated backfill under earthquake loading, and the results are compared with that of a centrifuge test. It is found that bending moments in the wall increased significantly during earthquakes both when backfill is dry or saturated. After base shaking, the residual moment on the wall was also significantly higher than the moment under static loading. Liquefaction of backfill soil contributed to the failure of the wall, which had large outward movement and uneven subsidence in the backfill. The numerical simulation was able to model quite well the main characteristics of acceleration, bending moment, displacement, and excess pore pressure recorded in the centrifuge test in most cases with the simulation for dry backfill slightly better than that for saturated backfill.
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Acknowledgments
The writers wish to express their gratitude to Dr. S. K. Haigh for his help with the postprocessing of the numerical results reported in this paper.
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Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 133 • Issue 5 • May 2007
Pages: 539 - 549
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 20, 2004
Accepted: Jul 5, 2006
Published online: May 1, 2007
Published in print: May 2007
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