Simulating Seismic Response of Cantilever Retaining Walls

Many failures of retaining walls during earthquakes occurred near waterfront. A reasonably accurate evaluation of earthquake effects under such circumstance requires proven analytical models for dynamic earth pressure, hydrodynamic pressure, and excess pore pressure. However, such analytical procedures, especially for excess pore pressure, are not available and hence comprehensive numerical procedures are needed. This paper presents the results of a finite-element simulation of a flexible, cantilever retaining wall with dry and saturated backfill under earthquake loading, and the results are compared with that of a centrifuge test. It is found that bending moments in the wall increased significantly during earthquakes both when backfill is dry or saturated. After base shaking, the residual moment on the wall was also significantly higher than the moment under static loading. Liquefaction of backfill soil contributed to the failure of the wall, which had large outward movement and uneven subsidence in the backfill. The numerical simulation was able to model quite well the main characteristics of acceleration, bending moment, displacement, and excess pore pressure recorded in the centrifuge test in most cases with the simulation for dry backfill slightly better than that for saturated backfill.

[1]  H. Westergaard.  Water Pressures on Dams During Earthquakes , 1933 .

[2]  O. C. Zienkiewicz,et al.  Simple model for transient soil loading in earthquake analysis. II. Non-associative models for sands , 1985 .

[3]  Mandar M. Dewoolkar,et al.  Seismic Behavior of Cantilever Retaining Walls with Liquefiable Backfills , 2001 .

[4]  Spg Madabhushi,et al.  Seismic Response of Gravity Quay Walls. II: Numerical Modeling , 1998 .

[5]  Spg Madabhushi,et al.  A numerical investigation into effects of single and multiple frequency earthquake motions , 2003 .

[6]  Masashi Kamon,et al.  Geotechnical disasters on the waterfront , 1996 .

[7]  Andrew Schofield,et al.  Cambridge Geotechnical Centrifuge Operations , 1980 .

[8]  Xiangwu Zeng,et al.  INFLUENCE OF VISCOUS FLUIDS ON PROPERTIES OF SAND , 1998 .

[9]  Xiangwu Zeng,et al.  On the behaviour of quay walls in earthquakes , 1993 .

[10]  M. Pastor,et al.  Static and dynamic behaviour of soils : a rational approach to quantitative solutions. I. Fully saturated problems , 1990, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

[11]  Makoto Kawamura,et al.  Dynamic Soil and Water Pressures of Submerged Soils , 1985 .

[12]  Koji Ichii,et al.  Performance based design for port structures , 1998 .

[13]  Chandrakant S. Desai,et al.  Constitutive laws for engineering materials, with emphasis on geologic materials , 1984 .

[14]  Mark Randolph,et al.  MODELING OF SHALLOWLY EMBEDDED OFFSHORE PIPELINES IN CALCAREOUS SAND , 2002 .

[15]  Tomohiro Kameoka,et al.  FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF EARTHQUAKE INDUCED DAMAGE TO ANCHORED SHEET PILE QUAY WALLS , 1993 .

[16]  M. Bolton.  THE STRENGTH AND DILATANCY OF SANDS , 1986 .

[17]  Xiangwu Zeng.  SEISMIC RESPONSE OF GRAVITY QUAY WALLS. I: CENTRIFUGE MODELING , 1998 .