Earthquake-Induced Lateral Soil Pressures on Structures

Based on the behavior of backfill soil, the state of knowledge reflects three design approaches: elastic solutions, elasto-plastic solutions and fully plastic (static) solutions. The major differences in the fully plastic solutions utilizing Mononobe-Okabe's approach have been with the application point of the resultant force. Plastic solutions do not consider soil-structure interaction effects and are based on rigid body motions. Elastic dynamic solutions are proposed that provide guidelines to estimate backfill pressures for small lateral displacements. Solutions are also provided to estimate dynamic pore-water pressures. The study of these papers indicates that there is a general lack of a comprehensive treatment of the subject and there is a need for further investigations in the following areas for the dynamic case: passive soil pressures; elasto-plastic backfill soil models; soil-structure interaction effects; mixed soils; surcharge effects; and wall stability for combined bearing, sliding, and overturning.