Analytical active earth thrust on cantilever walls with short heel

Abstract

The use of Rankine’s method is inappropriate for calculating active thrusts in cantilever retaining walls with a short heel because the thrust wedge is interrupted by the wall backface. The use of Coulomb’s approach is preferable, but at present only numerical solutions have been proposed to solve the problem. This paper presents an analytical solution, based on Coulomb’s approach, for evaluating the active thrust on cantilever walls with a short heel subjected to homogeneous backfill with a regular topographic profile and without pore pressure. The solution is given by an algorithm where two equations, one quadratic and the other cubic, are solved in turn, in an iterative procedure that converges rapidly. The distribution of lateral pressure and the position of the point of application of the thrust are also given in analytical terms.