SIMPLIFIED PASSIVE EARTH PRESSURE ANALYSIS

Determination of passive earth pressure acting on a rigid retaining wall is one of the most extensively studied stability problems in geotechnical engineering. Most methods of calculating passive pressures consider the soil mass to be limiting equilibrium and differ only in assumption about the shape of failure surface and variable soil properties the method of slices is widely used by practicing engineers to determine the earth pressure on a retaining wall. In this note a simple approach using the method of slices has been proposed for estimating passive earth pressure coefficients.