Seismic Design of Earth-Retaining Structures

Introduction

Earth-retaining structures provide support to excavations or earth fills: the earth pressure is either transmitted to the soil located below the foundations of the structure, as in gravity retaining walls, or balanced by a combination of horizontal passive forces in the ground and the reaction forces of additional structural elements, as in the case of embedded retaining structures. Seismic forces have a detrimental effect on these structures, producing an increase in the earth pressure and a decrease in the available soil resistance. Commonly, the seismic design of an earth-retaining structure is carried out using a pseudo-static approach, in which the seismic forces are derived from a uniform acceleration field and are applied statically to the soil-structure system. This approach has the advantage of being relatively simple to implement, but the rationale for the choice of the constant acceleration values needs careful consideration. Therefore, the following section...