Chapter 20: Earth pressure theory

This chapter describes the classical calculation of limiting lateral earth pressures for use in the analysis of retaining walls. The concept of simple active and passive zones of soil at failure is developed for total stress and effective stress failure criteria, for adhesionless and frictionless walls. The effects of dry and flooded tension cracks for the total stress (undrained) condition are considered. The way in which the simple active and passive zones can be modified to take account of the effects of wall adhesion or friction is described, and finally the possible in-service stresses acting on a retaining wall are discussed.