On the Active Failure Surface in the Backfilled Clay behind Rigid Retaining Wall in Slope Engineering

Abstract

In the classical Coulomb’s earth pressure theory, the failure surface in the backfilled clay behind rigid retaining wall in slope engineering is assumed a plane. However, it has been proved by a number of laboratory and field tests that this failure surface is actually a curving surface. In this paper, based on the vertical differential element method and the variational principle, a new analytic solution to determine the actual failure surface in the backfilled clay is derived, and the effects of the backfilled clay’s properties as well as the effects of the retaining wall’s smoothness are discussed. The result obtained from the proposed approach is compared with Coulomb’s earth pressure theory.