Active earth pressure acting on retaining wall considering anisotropic seepage effect

This paper presents a general solution for active earth pressure acting on a vertical retaining wall with a drainage system along the soil-structure interface. The backfill has a horizontal surface and is composed of cohesionless and fully saturated sand with anisotropic permeability along the vertical and horizontal directions. The extremely unfavourable seepage flow on the back of the retaining wall due to heavy rainfall or other causes will dramatically increase the active earth pressure acting on the retaining walls, increasing the probability of instability. In this paper, an analytical solution to the Laplace differential governing equation is presented for seepage problems considering anisotropic permeability based on Fourier series expansion method. A good correlation is observed between this and the seepage forces along a planar surface generated via finite element analysis. The active earth pressure is calculated using Coulomb’s earth pressure theory based on the calculated pore water pressures. The obtained solutions can be degenerated into Coulomb’s formula when no seepage exists in the backfill. A parametric study on the influence of the degree of anisotropy in seepage flow on the distribution of active earth pressure behind the wall is conducted by varying ratios of permeability coefficients in the vertical and horizontal directions, showing that anisotropic seepage flow has a prominent impact on active earth pressure distribution. Other factors such as effective internal friction angle of soils and soil/wall friction conditions are also considered.