EARTH PRESSURES ON RETAINING WALLS DUE TO ANISOTROPIC AND NONHOMOGENEOUS BACKFILLS

Abstract

In this paper an attempt is made to study the lateral earth pressures on retaining walls as affected by anisotropy and non-homogeneity with respect to cohesion, of the backfill. Both the passive and active conditions are studied and the method of characteristics is used in the analysis. Numerical results show that, as the coefficient of anisotropy, k, defined as the ratio of vertical strength to horizontal strength, changes from O' 8 to 2, the pressure at the top of the wall decreases considerably. Also, as k changes from O· 8 to 2, the modified passive and active earth pressure coefficients decrease when cohesion increases with depth and are unaffected by k when cohesion is constant with depth. On the other hand, when the rate of increase of cohesion with depth increases, the modified earth pressure coefficients are found to increase considerably.