Determination of passive earth pressure with lower bound finite elements limit analysis and modified pseudo-dynamic method

ABSTRACT

The present study deals with the determination of passive earth pressure under seismic condition by following the lower bound finite elements limit analysis and modified pseudo-dynamic methodology. In accordance with the lower bound finite elements formulation, the stress field was modelled using a three-noded triangular elements, while the passive pressure was determined via linear optimisation. The parametric study was performed, for a vertical rigid retaining wall, by varying the magnitude of seismic acceleration in horizontal direction (k_h) between 0 and 0.3, while the vertical seismic acceleration (k_v) was kept equal to 0 or 0.5 k_h. Furthermore, the damping coefficient for dry cohesionless backfill was kept ξ = 10%. The obtained results in various cases were found to be in good agreement with those found in the literature. It is expected that this method can be further used for solving other important geotechnical stability problems.