Seismic Earth Pressure Exerted on Retaining Walls Under a Large Seismic Load

In recent years, serious damage has been done to retaining structures because of large earthquakes. In order to establish practical methods for evaluating the seismic earth pressure, which is one of the important external forces acting on retaining structures during large earthquakes, a series of shaking table tests was conducted on retaining wall (RW) models. The experiments revealed that the seismic active earth pressure was considerably smaller than that obtained by the Mononobe-Okabe theory, particularly under a large seismic load. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that the seismic earth pressure had an upper limit, which was determined by the force equilibrium of the soil wedge at the critical state when the RW lost its stability. On the basis of the test results, a new method to evaluate the seismic earth pressure for practical designs under a large seismic load has been suggested. This proposed method provides a reasonable earth pressure as well as an angle of failure plane, those of which depend on the seismic stability of the retaining wall. It has been confirmed that earth pressure obtained by the proposed method agrees well with the measured seismic earth pressure exerted on several retaining walls with different degrees of stability.