Chapter 11: Foundations in slopes and for retaining walls

The natural topography of many seismically active regions, such as Japan or New Zealand, can be described as either hilly or rolling terrain. Therefore, often in engineering projects, such as those involving bridge abutments, building foundations and road pavements, foundations requiring to be constructed near sloping ground are encountered. Moreover, earth-retaining structures, such as retaining walls, bridge abutments, quay walls, anchored bulkheads, braced excavations and mechanically stabilised walls, are used throughout such seismically active areas.

When designing retaining structures and foundations in slopes to incorporate the effects of seismic loading, settlement/deformation criteria typically govern over bearing capacity criteria. While finite-element methods may be the preferred approach in analysing important structures, limit equilibrium methods have been commonly used due to their simplicity; however, they are limited by the need to assume a failure mechanism.