Department of Civil & Construction Engineering

University of Nairobi

FCE 412 GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING

IIB

2. LATERAL EARTH PRESSURE

 2.1 INTRODUCTION
• Structures that are built to retain vertical or
nearly vertical earth banks or any other
'
material are called retaining walls. Retaining
walls may be constructed of masonry or sheet
piles.
• All the walls have to withstand lateral
pressures either from earth or any other
material on their faces.
• Gravity walls resist movement because of
their heavy sections. They are built of mass
concrete or stone or brick masonry.
 2.1 INTRODUCTION
• In all these cases, the backfill tries to move
the wall from its position. The movement of
the wall is partly resisted by the wall itself and
partly by soil in front of the wall.
2.1 INTRODUCTION
2.1 INTRODUCTION
 2.2 RANKINE’S THEORY FOR
LATERAL EARTH PRESSURE
• Rankine's theory is applied to uniform
cohesion-less soil only. Later it was extended
to include cohesive soil by Bell in 1915.
• Rankine approached the lateral earth
pressure problem with the following
assumptions:
– The soil is homogeneous and isotropic, which
means c, and  have the same values
everywhere, and they have the same values in all
directions at every point (i.e., the strength on a
vertical plane is the same as that on a horizontal
plane);
2.2 RANKINE’S THEORY FOR
LATERAL EARTH PRESSURE
– The most critical shear surface is a plane. In
reality, it is slightly concave up, but this is a
reasonable assumption (especially for the active
case) and it simplifies the analysis;
– The ground surface is a plane (although it does
not necessarily need to be level);
– The wall is infinitely long so that the problem may
be analyzed in only two dimensions;
– The wall moves sufficiently to develop the active
or passive condition.
– The resultant of the normal and shear forces that
act on the back of the wall is inclined at an angle
parallel to the ground surface.