Estimation of active earth pressure against rigid retaining walls considering arching effects

It is known that the distribution of active earth pressure against a translating rigid wall is not triangular but nonlinear, owing to arching effects in the backfill. In the present paper, a new formulation is proposed for calculating the active earth pressure on a rigid retaining wall undergoing horizontal translation. It takes into account the arching effects that occur in the backfill (or retained soil mass). In order to check the accuracy of the proposed formulation, the predictions from the equation are compared with both existing full-scale test results and values from existing equations. The comparisons between calculated and measured values show that the proposed equations satisfactorily predict both the earth pressure distribution and the lateral active earth force on the translating wall. In order to facilitate calculation of active earth pressures using the proposed equations, a modified active pressure coefficient and an effective height of application of the lateral active force are also provided as functions of the soil friction angle, ϕ, and the wall friction angle, δ.