Static and seismic passive earth pressure coefficients on rigid retaining structures

Abstract

The passive earth pressure problem is investigated by means of the kinematical method of the limit analysis theory. A translational kinematically admissible failure mechanism composed of a sequence of rigid triangles is proposed. This mechanism allows the calculation of the passive earth pressure coefficients in both the static and seismic cases. Quasi-static representation of earthquake effects using the seismic coefficient concept is adopted. Rigorous upper-bound solutions are obtained in the framework of the limit analysis theory. The numerical results of the static and seismic passive earth pressure coefficients are presented and compared with the results of other authors.Key words: limit analysis, passive pressure, earthquake.