Retaining Structures

FB DELA PENA, MSC

Types of retaining structure
Masonry retaining walls
Concrete retaining walls
Gabion walls
Crib walls
Soil nails
Reinforced fill structures (Mechanically
stabilized earth walls)
Design of retaining walls
Requirements
I. Equilibrium calculations to
determine the overall
proportions and geometry of
the structure to achieve
equilibrium under the relevant
earth pressures and forces;
II. Structural design
calculations to determine the
size and properties of the
structural sections necessary to
resist the bending moments
and shear forces determined
from the equilibrium
calculations
General distribution of active and passive
pressures
Force distribution in relation to wall
geometry
Failure mechanisms for soil retaining
walls
Failure mechanisms for soil
retaining walls (modified from
GEO 1993 and BSI 1994;
BS8002, reproduced with
permission from the Head of the
Geotechnical Engineering
Office and the Director of the
Civil Engineering and
Development Department, the
Government of Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region).
Factors affecting active earth pressures
Passive pressures
• It is common practice to ignore passive pressure for retaining wall
design for roads in mountainous or hilly terrain. As noted earlier, for
full passive pressure to be mobilized a significant movement of the wall
has to take place. In addition, allowances may need to be made for the
possibility of a trench being excavated in front of the wall (e.g. due to
the installation of a roadside drain or other facilities in urban areas). In
the case of below-road retaining walls, loss of passive resistance may
also occur as a result of failure or erosion of the soil in front of the wall.
Furthermore, passive pressure will be significantly reduced where the
wall is located at the top of a steep slope (due to the passive wedge
potentially daylighting on the slope face).
Water pressures
• Water pressures within the soils behind the wall act to increase the destabilizing
force on the back of the wall, increasing its tendency to slide or overturn. Uplift
water pressures on the underside of the wall reduce the stabilizing benefit of the
self-weight of the wall. This double effect means that wall design is very
sensitive to water pressures. Unfortunately, water pressures are often difficult
to measure and vary considerably with time and location. It is therefore important
that the designer gives careful consideration to water conditions during design,
makes a conservative estimate of the likely maximum water pressures and takes
measures to ensure that these design pressures are not exceeded. Due to the
difficulties in achieving an acceptable factor of safety for an undrained wall,
standard details for retaining walls usually specify free-draining backfill
material and drainage through the structure and at the base of the backfill
(Section C5.5.2); water pressures are therefore often ignored in the
analysis.
Surcharges
• These can either be permanent or temporary and uniformly
distributed, such as traffic loads, which are usually treated as
uniformly distributed loads, or concentrated loads (e.g. building
foundations). A surcharge of 10 kN/m is frequently assumed
as a suitable traffic load, recommended for example for
Approach 1 Combination 2 of Eurocode 7 (Section C3.2.3).
The surcharge effects of compaction during wall backfilling
might also need to be considered in the design or else
minimized in the construction (Section C5.6)
Seismic loads
• These will depend on the magnitude of local seismic events and national
codes will usually specify the seismic acceleration force to be adopted in
the design of critical structures. These are unlikely to include retaining wall
structures on low-cost roads. For example, during the rehabilitation of the
Halsema Highway in the Philippines following the 1990 earthquake it was
concluded that the addition of seismic loads into the retaining wall designs
would substantially increase costs and render the project uneconomic. In
that particular case, because the factors of safety against failure of
the underlying slopes (geotechnical failure) were judged to be close
to unity, there was little justification in building any conservatism
into the design of retaining walls as the underlying ground would
ultimately fail anyway during seismic loading.
Suggested minimum lumped factors of
safety for retaining walls
Case study in Ethiopia
• During road reinstatement
following landslide damage in
Ethiopia, consideration was
given to the use of three
belowroad wall types:
masonry, gabion and
reinforced fill. In all three
cases, the following criteria
needed to be satisfied:
I. Wall foundation should be
beneath the landslide failure
surface; and
II. Bearing pressures should be
minimized where foundations
were to be formed in the more
clayey subgrades (by
minimizing wall heights and
distributing bearing pressures
as evenly as possible across
the foundation)
Option A - Masonry retaining wall
Option B – Gabion retaining wall (gentle
slopes)
Option C – Gabion retaining wall (steep
slopes)
Option D – Reinforced fill (RF) retaining
wall
Selection of wall cross-section
Wall backfill and drainage
Backfill
• The preferred backfill placed and
compacted behind a gravity wall is a
free-draining, well-graded, durable
material of high shear strength which
is free from any harmful matter
• Clay is not generally recommended as
backfill due to its low friction angle and
potential problems of swelling,
shrinkage and long-term
consolidation.
• Backfill should be compacted in layers
not normally exceeding 150 mm.
• Backfill should not contain:
• Peat, vegetation, timber, organic
or other degradable material;
• Synthetic or combustible
material;
• material subject to significant
volume change;
• Soluble or chemically aggressive
material; or
• Single-sized material, as
compaction will be difficult to
achieve.
Backfill drainage
Interceptor drain and drainage grip
Retaining wall construction
Access for wall construction
• The provision of access for wall construction can create
problems. Machine access to upper and lower retaining wall
positions (Fig. C5.1) at intermediate levels needs to be
preplanned with care to minimize ground disturbance that might
cause instability.
Wall heights, founding levels and
foundation stability
• Unfortunately,there is often an adherence to what the designer has assumed rather
than to the actual soil and rock conditions that become exposed on site during
construction.
• Where adverse bedding, other jointing or sloping rockhead is encountered, it may be
appropriate to grout vertical steel dowels (minimum 25 mm diameter) into the
foundation in order to secure the wall into the deeper rock mass
• Complex soil profiles with weak horizons occurring at depth, or where previous made
ground and construction spoil is present, will require careful assessment based on
field investigations.
• For example, during excavation for the replacement of storm damaged walls in Nepal
and the Philippines, it was observedthat many had been founded on boulder debris or
on uncompacted excavated spoil material placed on sloping ground.
• In most cases these founding levels were little more than a metre (and frequently
less) above in situ rock.
Wall length
Excavation stability measures
• Excavating a wall foundation in short lengths (2–10 m
depending on circumstances) at a time;
• Constructing the wall and backfilling before excavating the next
length;
• Minimizing the time that the excavation remains open;
• Avoiding construction during the wet season
Examples of unsafe excavation
Construction quality control
• For all wall types, sieve
analyses are carried out on
both the wall backfill and the
backfill drain (free-draining
granular layer) to check for
compliance with the
specification for the grading
envelope.
• Quality control compaction
tests are normally carried out
for every 1000 m of fill placed
Construction quality control
• For mortared masonry walls it is important to ensure that all voids
are filled with mortar.
• The mortar should meet the strength required in the specification
(a minimum compressive strength of 17.5 N/mm is often
specified).
Construction quality control
• For gabion walls, the specifications for mesh size, galvanizing,
wire diameter, panel frames, basket connectors and the twisted
connections (minimum three half turns) need to be adhered to.
• Usually, stones should be of an even size that is at least double
the mesh size and be of good rock quality.
References
• T. Hunt, G. J. Hearn* & S. d’Agostino (2011). Retaining
structures. From: Hearn, G. J. (ed.) Slope Engineering for
Mountain Roads. Geological Society, London, Engineering
Geology Special Publications, 24, 209–229.