Influences of backfill properties and stress state on ultimate earth pressure coefficients

摘要

Design and construction of retaining structures constitute an important part of road and railway projects. Therefore, accurate estimation of lateral earth pressures is necessary for the safe and economic design of retaining structures. It has been established by the researchers that the failure surface geometry is critical to the determination of the magnitudes of lateral earth pressures. Accordingly, an experimental study was conducted to identify and to evaluate the parameters that influence the failure plane geometries of cohesionless backfills behind retaining walls. For this purpose, a lg physical model consisting of a vertical wall retaining horizontal backfill has been developed and manufactured. Furthermore, the particle image velocimetry (PIV) is employed to monitor and to detect the shear planes associated with retaining wall model failure at active state.