Earth pressure on anchor–shotcrete retaining structures

An analytical solution is proposed for limiting earth pressure on pre-stressed anchor–shotcrete retaining structures. The solution is in accordance with pre-stress diffusion model assumption, wedge theory and Mohr–Coulomb theory. Centrifuge tests were performed to investigate the feasibility of the analytical solution for the earth pressure on pre-stressed anchor–shotcrete retaining structures, and these were further verified by centrifuge tests from other published works. It was found that the results of both applied centrifuge tests agreed well with the analytical solution. The tests also provided strong proof that pre-stress has little influence on the pre-stress angle of diffusion based on elastic semi-infinite space theory.