Performance Based Aseismic Design of Rigid Retaining Walls

Professor Shamsher Prakash

Retaining walls have failed either by sliding or by a combined action of sliding and rocking displacements during earthquakes. Performance Based Design of the retaining walls in seismic areas must account for these displacements, in addition to the usual factors of safety against failure in bearing, sliding and overturning. A realistic model for estimating dynamic displacement which accounts for the combined action of sliding and rocking and takes into consideration non-linear stiffness of soil and geometric and material damping and coupling effects is now available. This model has been used to calculate the displacement for several combinations of backfill and foundation soil conditions. Based on this study, typical design charts for preliminary Performance Based Design have been proposed.

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