Insight into the seismic response of gravity retaining walls

An extensive study of gravity walls subjected to strong seismic excitation is presented, exploring the role of parameters such as the width of wall, the type of excitation (idealised wavelets or recorded accelerograms), the peak ground acceleration (PGA), the dominant period (T_P) of the wavelets, the accelerogram’s polarity and the coefficient of friction of the wall–soil interface. The retaining and foundation soil consists of dry sand layers modelled by a refined constitutive model. Appropriate interface elements, allowing separation and sliding, model the wall–soil interface. Results are presented mainly in terms of time histories and dimensionless soil pressure distributions. Both horizontal and vertical seismic soil pressures are explored and compared with the classical Mononobe–Okabe-type and Rankine-type pseudostatic analytical solutions. It is shown that reduced acceleration coefficients must be input in such solutions to obtain reasonable results.