A PSO-Based Estimation of Dynamic Earth Pressure Coefficients of a Rigid Retaining Wall

Abstract

Earth retaining walls are the alleviating structures used to avert downward slope movement of earth masses and provide sustenance for vertical or near vertical grade changes. For designing these structures, it is necessary to regulate the earth pressure exerted by the soil behind the wall. But in seismic prone areas, retaining structures experience maximum devastation as dynamic loads are repetitive in nature. Mononobe–Okabe method based on pseudo-static approach gives an approximate value for the linear distribution of seismic earth pressure by considering the parameters like wall friction angle, soil friction angle, horizontal, and vertical seismic coefficients. The present work includes the determination of dynamic earth pressure coefficients by using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) technique. The effects of wide range of parameters like shear wave velocity, primary wave velocity, time effects, and phase difference on earth pressure coefficients have been studied. A comparison has been made between the pseudo-static and pseudo-dynamic earth pressure coefficients to highlight the realistic and nonlinearity nature of seismic active earth pressures. It is found that the horizontal and vertical seismic accelerations are more significant for the computation of dynamic earth pressure, which is highly sensitive to soil friction angle and less sensitive to wall friction angle. The results obtained in the proposed method are also compared with reported results, which show a good agreement.