Analytical Prediction of Active Earth Pressure in Narrow MSE Walls Considering Arching Effects

Lateral pressure on a retaining wall could be a critical parameter that affects the stability and efficiency of the wall design. Traditional methods to estimate active lateral earth pressure is often inadequate in cases where geometric constraints, or arching effects play significant roles. An analytical method has been used in this study to estimate soil and geotextile stresses in reinforced retaining walls by considering the arching effect. It presents a clear analytical solution for calculating lateral earth pressure in narrow Mechanically Stabilized Earth (MSE) walls. The model includes bilinear failure surfaces and nonlinear stress paths, which better reflect real soil behavior in comparison to the traditional methods with linear failure surfaces. The proposed method demonstrated excellent agreement with both field data and centrifuge test results. According to the proposed analytical approach, the distribution of horizontal soil pressure is not linear. The lateral soil pressure is zero at the top and bottom, while the maximum pressure is between 0.4 and 0.9 of the wall height. The formulation further indicates that the higher the friction at the interfaces, the greater the arching effect, so reducing the lateral earth pressure on the retaining wall. Moreover, narrowing the backfill space leads to a significant reduction in lateral earth pressure.