Use of Retaining Walls with Relief Shelves as an Economic Solution

Cantilever retaining wall with pressure relief shelves is considered one of the special types of retaining walls. The concept of providing pressure relief shelves towards the backfill side of a retaining wall reduces the total earth pressure on the wall, which results in reducing the thickness of the wall and ultimately to get an economic design. Limited solutions were presented for this type of walls in some researches and references. This paper presents a set of finite element analyses for this type of wall using PLAXIS2D-AE. The reduced total active earth pressure due to provision of shelf has been depicted. It was found that the shelves have a significant effect on the resulted distribution of the earth pressure. It follows approximately the distribution of the Klein’s 1964 solution. Parametric study is conducted to discuss the effect of the number of shelves, shelf rigidity and shelf position on the resulted lateral earth pressure distribution, top wall movement and the maximum acting bending moment on the wall. For high retaining walls and some repairing systems of constructed walls having stability problems; it is much recommended to provide the cantilever wall by one shelf at one third of the wall height from wall top or more shelves at different levels.