Studies on Anchored Flexible Retaining Walls in Sand

This paper describes an experimental investigation of the behavior of laboratory scale (0.6-m) flexible retaining walls in sand supported by up to three levels of anchors. It is concluded that the behavior of a tied-back wall is influenced to a large extent by the flexibility of the wall as well as the anchor inclinations and initial design assumption. With wall flexibility increase, the bending moments in the wall decreased, the decreases for single-anchored walls being in agreement with the moment reduction curves of Rowe. For all walls there was an initial loss in anchor load value on prestressing. Further load changes occurred with construction, the greatest changes occurring with the most flexible walls.