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Seismic stability analysis of gravity retaining wall supporting c–φ soil with
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DOI: 10.1016/j.sandf.2019.01.004

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Soils and Foundations 59 (2019) 1103–1111
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Seismic stability analysis of gravity retaining wall supporting c–u

soil with cracks
Xinpo Li a,b,c,⇑, Shuxi Zhao b,c, Siming He a,b,d, Qiwei Yan b,c, Xiaoqin Lei a,b,d
a
The Key Laboratory of Mountain Hazards and Earth Surface Process, CAS, Chengdu 610041, China
b
Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, CAS, Chengdu 610041, China
c
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
d
Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

Received 31 March 2018; received in revised form 6 November 2018; accepted 21 January 2019
Available online 13 May 2019

Abstract

This article presents an analytical approach for the seismic stability analysis of gravity retaining wall with c–u backfill soil. Cracks
which are pre-existing (open before the collapse) and are form as part of slope collapse are considered. For a translational failure mech-
anism assumed, formulas are provided to calculate directly the yield acceleration and the inclination of failure surface. Factors such as
cracks and cracks opening, wall back inclination, soil-wall friction, backfill slope are easily to be coupled into the formulations. Both the
depth and most adverse location of the crack can be determined from the optimization procedure. Comparisons are made with existing
methods and the influences of cracks opening are discussed. The influence of a crack presence on seismic stability of soil-wall system is
distinct and pre-existing (opened) cracks have more adverse effect.
Ó 2019 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of The Japanese Geotechnical Society.

Keywords: Seismic stability analysis; Limit analysis; Retaining wall; c–u soil; Cracks

1. Introduction earthquake (Ling et al., 2001), the 2004 Chuetsu earth-

Gravity walls are widely used as earth retaining struc-
tures supporting fill soils adjacent to roads and residential
areas, also in regions prone to earthquake. Many research-
ers have developed design methods for retaining walls dur-
ing earthquakes by using different approaches. Though the
quest for rational design methods of retaining structures
has been pursued for several decades, deformations rang-
ing from slight displacement to catastrophic failure have
been observed in many earth retaining structures during
the recent major earthquakes, including the 1999 Ji-Ji
Peer review under responsibility of The Japanese Geotechnical Society.
⇑ Corresponding author at: The Key Laboratory of Mountain Hazards
and Earth Surface Process, CAS, Chengdu 610041, China.
E-mail address: lixinpo@imde.ac.cn (X. Li).
quake (Trandafir et al., 2009), and the 2008 Wenchuan
earthquake (Han et al., 2009).
To estimate seismic active earth pressure on retaining
walls from backfill soil, the Mononobe–Okabe (M-O)
method or its extensions are most widely used
(Mononobe and Matsuo, 1929; Richards and Elms, 1979;
Saran and Gupta, 2003). M-O method is originally devel-
oped for cohesionless soil only. Saran and Gupta (2003)
extended M-O method to evaluate seismic earth pressure
on retaining wall supporting c–u soils. However, in these
approaches pressure due to the contributions of friction
and cohesion are optimized separately, which can produce
two distinct failure planes. Richards and Shi (1994) pre-
sented a plasticity-based solution to calculate seismic lat-
eral earth pressure limited to vertical walls retaining
horizontal c–u backfill. Shukla et al. (2011, 2013) extended

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sandf.2019.01.004
0038-0806/Ó 2019 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of The Japanese Geotechnical Society.
1104 X. Li et al. / Soils and Foundations 59 (2019) 1103–1111
Coulomb’s expression for the seismic force on walls sup-
porting c–u backfill. More recently, Rankine earth pressure
theory was extended to be used for c–u backfill under seis-
mic conditions (Iskander et al., 2013; Nian and Han, 2013).
Though may have been used in engineering, there is a basic
shortcoming in the close-form solutions above mentioned:
the limit equilibrium of the soil wedge is anlysised without
taking into account the presence of the wall.
Numerical techniques have recently been adopted to
compute the seismic earth pressure against a retaining wall
(Psarropoulos et al., 2005; Tiznado and Rodriguez-Roa,
2011). However, numerical modeling is generally costly,
time consuming and difficult to implement in engineering
practices.
In the present study the kinematic theorem of limit anal-
ysis is used to find the yield acceleration of inclined rigid
earth retaining walls, supporting sloped c–u backfills.
The authors prefer limit analysis over limit equilibrium,
because the latter cannot be proved a rigorous upper or
lower bound on the true solutions. This is because the
proof of limit analysis theorems requires kinematics,
whereas the limit equilibrium method is based solely on
the equilibrium of forces (and (or) moments). Conse-
quently, the kinematic admissibility of the failure mecha-
nism is not always enforced in the limit equilibrium
method, leading to approximate solutions that cannot be
interpreted as rigorous bounds on true solutions
(Michalowski, 2013). A closed-form solution to the seismic
stability problem of retaining wall supporting c–u backfill
is presented. Tension cracks which can be pre-existing or
opening with collapse occurrence are coupled into the solu-
tions. Comparisons with other published methods and a
discussion on the effects of crack opening, wall base adhe-
sion and wall geometry are presented.
2. Formulation of the analytical approach
The two-block translational failure mechanism as illus-
trated in Fig. 1(a) is considered in this work. The upper
bound theorem of limit analysis states that the soil-wall
system will start to slide under its own weight plus inertia
force induced by earthquake and any other loads, if the
rate of work done by the external forces exceed the rate
of internal energy dissipation for any assumed kinemati-
cally admissible failure mechanism. So, the yield accelera-
tion factor can be given by equating the rate of external
work to the rate of energy dissipation.
Earthquake loading is simulated using pseudo-static
horizontal acceleration ah = khg, where kh is the horizontal
seismic coefficient. Vertical acceleration is not considered in
this study, and the seismic action is assumed uniformly dis-
tributed in the whole mass of the system.
The failure mode shown in Fig. 1(a) consists of two
wedges, the soil wedge and the retaining wall wedge. This
failure mechanism is geometrically specified by wall height
H, wall top and bottom width a and b, wall back inclina-
tion x, backfill soil slope i, and the angle that planar failure
surface makes with the horizontal a. The rate of work done
by the gravity forces is the vertical component of the veloc-
ities multiplied by the weight of the wedges:


W g ¼ W s V 0 sinða  uÞ  W w V 1 sindb ð1Þ
where Ws and Ww indicate the weight of soil wedge and
retaining wall, respectively, db is friction angle between
retaining wall and the base, u is soil internal friction angle,
V0 and V1 are velocities of soil and wall.
Once the system is subjected to horizontal seismic load-
ing, the rate of work done by the inertial force needs to be
accounted for in the energy balance equation. It can be cal-
culated analogously to the rate of work of the soil weight,
and take the form of


W s ¼ k h W s V 0 cosða  /Þ þ k h W w V 1 cosdb ð2Þ
For the rigid-block mechanism considered, the energy
dissipation takes place along the failure line of the backfill
soil and the wall base. The rate of energy dissipation D, can
be written as

cHV 0 cosucosðx  iÞ
D¼ þ cA bV 1 cosdb ð3Þ
cosxsinða  iÞ
where c is soil cohesion, cA is wall base adhesion (generally,
cA equal to c or less). The upper bound solution for the
yield acceleration factor can be given by equating the rate
of internal energy dissipation to the external rate of work
W_ g þ W_ s ¼ D_ ð4Þ
Substituting Eqs. (1)–(3) into (4) yields
W s V 0 sinða  uÞ þ k y W s V 0 cosða  uÞ  W w V 1 sindb
cHV 0 cosucosðx  iÞ
þ k y W w V 1 cosdb ¼ þ cA bV 1 cosdb ð5Þ
cosxsinða  iÞ
where ky is the yield acceleration coefficient of the failure
mechanism respect to angle a.
For a kinematically admissible failure mechanism, some
relationship should be satisfied between the velocity V0 and
the velocity V1. Let us observe the two adjoining wedges as
shown in Fig. 1(b). The left and right wedges move with the
absolute velocities V1 and V0 which incline at angles db and
u to their bases, respectively. The relative velocity of the
left wedge with respect to the right one along the interface
is represented as V01, which inclines at an angle d. To allow
the velocities assigned to the wedge failure mechanism to
be kinematically compatible, the two adjoining wedges
must not move to cause overlap or indentation. This
implies that the velocity hodograph must be closed, i.e.,
V 0 þ V 01 ¼ V 1 ð6Þ
From Eq. (4) and Fig. 1(b), we obtain:
cosðdb þ d þ xÞ
V0 ¼V1 ð7Þ
cosðu þ d þ x  aÞ
where d is friction angle between retaining wall and backfill
soil.
 X. Li et al. / Soils and Foundations 59 (2019) 1103–1111 1105

Fig. 1. Translational failure mechanism of retaining wall with c–u backfill and (b) velocity compatibility between adjacent blocks and velocity hodograph.

Substituting Eq. (5) into Eq. (3) and rearranging the and Elms (1979) in which the dynamic lateral pressure is
terms leads to the following expression for ky: determined by Mononobe and Matsuo (1929) solution.

cH cosucosðxiÞ
cosxsinðaiÞ
þ cA b cosðuþdþxaÞ
cosðdb þdþxÞ
cosdb þ W w cosðuþdþxaÞ
cosðdb þdþxÞ
sindb  W s sinða  uÞ
ky ¼ ð8Þ
W w cosðuþdþxaÞ
cosðdb þdþxÞ
cosdb þ W s cosða  uÞ

The critical seismic coefficient is obtained by minimising Introducing several dimensionless parameters c*, f and v
ky, with respect to a. This means taking the first derivatives which are defined as follows
of ky and equating them to zero, i.e. (oky/oa) = 0. Solving c
this equation and substituting the value of a, the least c ¼ ð10Þ
cH
upper bound value of yield acceleration factor is calcu-
c
lated. This critical value of ky is indicated in the following f¼ w ð11Þ
text as kcr. c
When the backfill is cohesionless and the wall back face ða þ bÞ
1

is vertical, that is, c = 0, x = 0, Eq. (6) reduces to v¼2 ð12Þ

H
cA b
W w cosðuþdaÞ
cosðdb þdÞ
sindb  W s sinða  uÞ j¼ ð13Þ
ky ¼ ð9Þ cH 2
W cosðuþdaÞ
w cosðdb þdÞ cosdb þ W s cosða  uÞ
where c and cw are unit weight of backfill soil and
retaining wall. By considering the problem geometry,
Eq. (9) has been presented by Li et al. (2010). It was found
Eq. (8) can be represented in nondimensional form as given
that minimizing Eq. (9) can yield identical critical seismic
below
coefficient (kcr) with the method developed by Richards

c cosucosðxiÞ
cosxsinðaiÞ
þ j cosðuþdþxaÞ
cosðdb þdþxÞ
cosdb þ fv cosðuþdþxaÞ
cosðdb þdþxÞ
sindb  12 cosðixÞcosðaxÞsinðauÞ
cos2 xsinðaiÞ
ky ¼ ð14Þ
fv cosðuþdþxaÞ
cosðdb þdþxÞ
cosdb þ 1 cosðixÞcosðaxÞcosðauÞ
2 cos2 xsinðaiÞ
1106 X. Li et al. / Soils and Foundations 59 (2019) 1103–1111
Fig. 2. Envelope of the yield stress states in soil containing cracks
(Michalowski, 2013). fc, uniaxial compressive strength; [v], velocity
discontinuity vector, respectively; dc, angle velocity discontinuity vector
[v] makes with the direction of an opening crack (velocity discontinuity);
rn, normal component of traction on discontinuity; s, shear component.
From Eq. (14), it can be found that ky is a function of
problem geometry, soil properties and wall friction
parameters.
3. Tension cracks
The effect of tension cracks is quite important in active
earth pressure problems. While opening of a crack in soil
at the top of a retaining wall backfill is a common occur-
rence, typical analyses do not include the process of
crack-opening. At most, a pre-existing crack is considered
and the issue is addressed using a traditional limit equilib-
rium analysis (Spencer, 1968) or limit analysis (Utili,
2013; Zhao et al., 2016). In this study, two cases are consid-
ered as related to the crack presence: (i) pre-existing cracks
present in the backfill soil, (ii) cracks does not exist prior to
failure, but is formed as part of the collapse mechanism.
Including the tension crack as part of solution using limit
analysis involves calculating the rate of energy dissipation
along the opening crack. For case (i), no energy dissipation
: equation
is expended for the crack opening (Dc =0). For case (ii), the
c cosu½cosðxiÞ
sinðaiÞ
 sinðaiÞ
ncosðiÞ
 þ j cosðuþdþxaÞ
cosðdb þdþxÞ
cosdb þ fv cosðuþdþxaÞ
cosðdb þdþxÞ
ky ¼
fv cosðuþdþxaÞ
cosðdb þdþxÞ
cosdb þ 12 cosða  uÞ½cosðixÞcosðaxÞ
cos2 xsinðaiÞ
rate of energy expended (dissipated) for the crack-opening
:
has to be determined (Dc –0). The method that presented
by Michalowski (2013) will be adopted in this study.
Fig. 3. The translational failure mechanism for wall-backfill system with a
crack.
The use of limit analysis is well written about in existing
literature, but very few attentions have been paid on the
problem about work expenditure during crack-opening in
soil. Recently, a method was presented for including the
presence of cracks in slopes stability assessment based on
the kinematic approach of limit analysis. The envelope of
the yield stress states in soil containing cracks is illustrated
in Fig. 2. In the stress range where cracks are expected to
form, the envelope of yield is curved whereas yielding at
other stress states is the classical Mohr-Coulomb function
(linear). According to the flow rule associated with this
yield condition, a closed-form solution for the rate of work
dissipation per unit area of the discontinuity surface
(Michalowski, 2013)
1  sindc
d c ¼ c½vcosu ð15Þ
1  sinu
The failure mechanism of wall-backfill system consider-
ing presence of tension cracks is illustrated in Fig. 3. Intro-
ducing parameter n to define the depth of the crack (Fig. 3),
the rate of works dissipation during incipient failure can be
calculated easily. For the case of pre-existing cracks, the
following expression for the upper bound to the yield accel-
eration coefficient of the failure mechanism respect to angle
a and n can be given by resolve the work-rate balance
2
sindb  12 sinða  uÞ½cosðixÞcosðaxÞ
cos2 xsinðaiÞ
 nsinðaiÞ
cosacosi

2 ð16Þ
 nsinðaiÞ
cosacosi

Consider now the case where crack (Fig. 3) does not
exist prior to failure, but is formed as part of the collapse
mechanism, with the soil strength described by the function
 X. Li et al. / Soils and Foundations 59 (2019) 1103–1111 1107

in Fig. 2. It follows from the geometrical relations in Fig. 3
that the velocity vector must be inclined at angle
dc ¼ p2  a þ u to the opening crack. This relation follows
from admissibility requirements of the failure mechanism.
Substituting dc into Eq. (15), and integrating the rate of
work dissipation over the crack length nH, the rate of work
expended (dissipated) for the crack-opening becomes
: 1  cosða  uÞ
Dc ¼ cV 0 cosu nH
1  sinu
To account for this additional work expenditure needed
for the wall-soil to collapse, the dissipation rate in Eq. (17)
is added to the left-hand side of Eq. (16), giving rise to the
following expression for the upper bound to the yield accel-
eration coefficient of the failure mechanism respect to angle
a and n.
cient of the wall-soil system is determined directly by the
work equation without calculation of earth pressure force.
In order to make the comparison, seismic earth pressures
obtained by existing methods are substituted to the simple
equation presented by Richards and Elms (1979) to get the
values of kcr.
k y W w þ P AE cosd ¼ ðW w þ P AE sindÞtandb ð20Þ
Factors considered in existing solutions are not all the
ð17Þ
same as in the proposed approach; therefore, the compar-
isons are made only for conditions where solutions are
available. The three parameters db, f and v represent the
material and geometry properties of retaining wall. Though
the values of f and v have some effects on the results of kcr,
it is not the aim of this paper. So values db = 30°, f = 1.2,
v = 0.375 are adopted in all the discussions of this paper.

2
c cosu½cosðxiÞ
sinðaiÞ
 sinðaiÞ
ncosðiÞ
þ nncosðauÞ
1sinu
 þ j cosðuþdþxaÞ
cosðdb þdþxÞ
cosdb þ fv cosðuþdþxaÞ
cosðdb þdþxÞ
sindb  12 sinða  uÞ½cosðixÞcosðaxÞ
cos2 xsinðaiÞ
 nsinðaiÞ
cosacosi

ky ¼ 2
fv cosðuþdþxaÞ
cosðdb þdþxÞ
cosdb þ 12 cosða  uÞ½cosðixÞcosðaxÞ
cos2 xsinðaiÞ
 nsinðaiÞ
cosacosi

ð18Þ

Comparison 1. Wilson and Elgamal (2015) performed a

The depth of tension crack zc is generally given for static
loading by the following expression based on Rankine’s
analysis
2c p u
zc ¼ tanð þ Þ
c 4 2
Eq. (19) is sometimes employed in seismic analysis as a
rough approximation of the tension crack under seismic
conditions. In the both two cases of this study, the depth
and most adverse location of the crack are all determined
from an optimization procedure where the minimum of
the critical seismic coefficient of the system is sought. This
will be done herein by minimizing ky with respect to two
independent variables: a and n.
4. Comparisons with available solutions
It is instructive to compare the values of kcr calculated
by the proposed method to those obtained from other solu-
tions published in the literature in order to show the possi-
ble differences. Comparisons are conducted herein for c–u
backfill soils. In this approach, the critical seismic coeffi-
shake table testing on a wall supporting a 1.7 m engineered
dense sand backfill with 7% silt (SP-SM, c-/ soil) com-
pacted and tested at optimum moisture content (about
8.5%). The compacted dry unit weight of backfill soil was
ð19Þ about 19.3 kN/m3, and the internal friction angle and cohe-
sion of the soil are 48° and 14 kPa, respectively. The scaled
versions of a modified Century City Station record of the
1994 Northridge earthquake (E) were developed for use
as the input shake table excitations. The series tests evalu-
ated a 0.8 g yield acceleration for the system and no ground
crack was observed during or after the tests. By using the
same soil parameters and a wall with db = 40°, f = 1.2,
v = 0.375, d = 32°and x = 0, the yield acceleration
obtained by the proposed approach are 0.79 without ten-
sion cracks and 0.73 with tension cracks.
Comparison 2. For cohesionless backfill, the proposed
method is compared with the classic methods of the M-O
theory and a method based on Coulomb’s sliding mecha-
nism by Shukla (2013). Wall base adhesion are not taken
into account, that is, cA = 0. It comes out that the three
methods give identical critical seismic coefficient kcr for dif-
ferent values of u and i. So in this case, upper bound

Table 1
Comparison of kcr for cohesionless backfill soil (d = 2/3u is used).
Backfill slope i (deg) 0 10
Soil friction angle u (deg) 20 30 40 30
The proposed method kcr 0.093 0.202 0.291 0.159
M-O theory 0.093 0.202 0.291 0.159
Shukla (2013) 0.093 0.202 0.291 0.159
1108 X. Li et al. / Soils and Foundations 59 (2019) 1103–1111
Fig. 4. Comparison of the proposed method with other methods from literature for kcr against c*.
method of limit analysis results in same outcome with limit
equilibrium method provided identical failure mechanisms
are considered in both analyses (see Table 1).
Comparison 3. In this case, c-u backfill is considered but
tension cracks are not taken into account. Kim et al. (2010)
developed a simple formula that can take into account the
effects of backfill cohesion and wall adhesion on dynamic
active earth pressure. The formula was derived by compos-
ing force equilibrium equations for the entire backfill
wedge behind the retaining wall, and the maximum
dynamic active earth pressure was determined by selecting
different failure surface angle values by trial and error. In
the method of Iskander et al. (2013), the Rankine classic
earth pressure solution has been expanded to predict the
seismic active earth pressure behind rigid walls supporting
c–u backfill. Comparisons are made among these methods
as shown in Fig. 4. It is observed that the resultant values
of kcr determined by the present study are consistent with
that by methods of Kim et al. (2010) and Shukla (2013),
but somewhat different from Iskander et al. (2013) due to
the difference in the assumptions involved. The Iskander
et al. method is a stress-based solution where the distribu-
tion of the net active thrust and the soil–wall friction angle
are calculated directly. The soil-wall friction is assumed to
be constant in most earth pressure solutions (e.g., Coulomb
assumes d = 2/3u). Herein, d = 2/3u is used in the other
three methods while in Iskander et al. method the value
of d is from a function of problem geometry, pseudo-
static accelerations and soil properties; it varies with depth.
Comparison 4. In this case, backfill cohesion and pre-
exiting tension cracks are taken into account. Comparisons
of kcr and crack depth ratio n are made among the pro-
posed method, Shukla (2013) method and Iskander et al.
(2013) method as shown in Fig. 5. It can be seen from
Fig. 5 that differences appear among the methods due to
the difference in the assumptions involved. Iskander et al.
method is a stress-based solution and the other two meth-
ods use trial failure wedge mechanism. Furthermore, meth-
ods used to determine zc are different. This is the reason
why the results of Iskender et al. are different with the
two other methods. The trial failure wedge mechanism is
used both in Shukla’s method and the proposed method.
But an assumption that the mobilized cohesive resistance
within the tension crack zone varies linearly from c at the
bottom of the tension crack to zero at the top of the tension
crack was made in Shukla’s method. In the proposed
method, the mobilized cohesive resistance is assumed to
be zero within the whole crack. So the value of kcr obtained
by the proposed method is smaller than that of Shukla’s
method. Furthermore, Eq. (19) is used to determine zc in
Shukla’s method and an iterative calculation method is
used in the present study. It is shown from the calculations
that zc changes with both kh and i (Fig. 5), which also indi-
cates that the Eq. (19) will significantly overestimate the
depth of the tension crack for c–u backfill under seismic
conditions, especially when cohesion is high. This explains
why the results of the two methods are very close when
cohesion is low while the differences are much more distinct
when cohesion is high.
Figs. 4 and 5 also shows that the backfill soil slope has
important effects on the ability to resist earthquake thrust,
as backfill slope increases, the critical seismic coefficient
decreases remarkably.
5. Discussions
5.1. Significances of crack opening and backfill slope
In practice, opening of a crack in soil at the top of a
slope can occur prior to slope collapse or with the collapse.
Formation of a crack during the failure process is sensitive
to the tensile strength of the soil. Even if the tensile strength
is nil, there is still work expenditure needed to open the
crack, as such cracks are seldom subjected to pure tension
(Michalowski, 2013).
The significances of considering tension cracks in pre-
dicting the critical seismic coefficient of the wall-soil system
is depicted in Fig. 6(a). Two cases of soil cohesion with
c* = 0.06 and 0.12 are considered and cA is set to be zero.
It is obviously unconservative to ignore the tension crack
depth in the analysis. When considering tension cracks,
pre-existing (opened) cracks have a little more adverse
 X. Li et al. / Soils and Foundations 59 (2019) 1103–1111 1109

Fig. 5. Comparison of the proposed method with other methods from literature for kcr and n against c*.

influence on system stability than crack formation (open- crack. But the differences between the two cases of crack
ing) as part of the collapse mechanism because no work opening (prior to or with collapse) are not very significant
needs to be expended for the opening of a pre-existing especially when c* is set to low value.
1110 X. Li et al. / Soils and Foundations 59 (2019) 1103–1111

Fig. 6. Comparison of kcr and n among conditions of no cracks, pre-existing crack and crack opening with collapse for i = 0° and c* = 0.06, 0.12.

Fig. 7. Effects of adhesion of wall base and wall geometry on kcr.

The depth of tension crack represented by parameter n
herein is obtained by a minimizing procedure. Compar-
isons between the proposed method and Eq. (20) for
c* = 0.06 and 0.12 are depicted in Fig. 6(b). It can be seen
that the depth of tension crack determined by this method
is lower than the limitation on the crack depth defined by
Eq. (20). It is likely that the failure mechanism will engage
not the deepest crack but the one at the that has the most
adverse effect on stability (more deeper cracks may be pre-
sent prior to slope collapse because cracks can be caused by
factors other than overall stability such as desiccation
cracks).
The importance of cohesion in predicting the critical
seismic coefficient can also be found from Fig. 6. It is clear
that as cohesion increases, kcr increases significantly.
5.2. The effects of wall base adhesion and wall geometry
The effects of wall base adhesion, wall back inclination
and width ratio of top to base are plotted in Fig. 7. Param-
eters c* = 0.12, i = 0°, and u = 10° are used, and only the
case of pre-exiting tension cracks are conducted. Wall base
adhesion ofcA = 0, 0.5c and 1.0c, wall back inclination
angle x = 5°, 0° and 5°, width ratio of top to base
a/b = 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1.0 are considered. As can be
expected, wall base cohesion has a significance effects on
the results of kcr, and the presence of cA can enhance the
stability of the wall-soil system dramatically. From com-
parison among Fig. 7(a), (b) and (c), the wall back inclina-
tion also has some effect on the system stability and a tilt to
wall face has an adverse effect. As to the width ratio of top
to base, it is found that a small value of a/b is more favour-
able. It should be noted that wall geometry influence the
overturning stability of gravity walls which is not consid-
ered in the present analysis. In practice using, both anti-
sliding and overturning stability should be checked.
6. Conclusions
This work attempts to develop a method to analyze the
seismic stability of gravity retaining walls with c–u backfill
under the category of upper bound theorem of limit analy-
sis. For a translational failure mechanism assumed, closed-
form solutions are derived that are based on the soil-wall
 X. Li et al. / Soils and Foundations 59 (2019) 1103–1111
system analysis. The expressions derived in this paper can
be conveniently used to calculate the critical acceleration
factor kcr, which is a key parameter to evaluate the seismic
stability of gravity retaining walls. The tension crack was
accommodated in the kinematic approach of limit analysis
of wall-soil system. Two conditions of crack presences, pre-
existing (opened) and crack formation (opening) are con-
sidered as part of the collapse mechanism. Both the depth
and most adverse location of the crack can be determined
from the optimization procedure. The influence of a crack
presence on seismic stability of soil-wall system is distinct
and pre-existing (opened) cracks have more adverse effect.
It is unconservative to ignore the tension cracks in seismic
stability analysis of retaining walls. The depth of tension
crack determined by this method is lower than the limited
crack depth defined by Rankine’s analysis equation. Wall
base adhesion can enhance stability of the wall-soil system
dramatically and wall geometry also has some influences
on the system stability.
Acknowledgements
Financial support from the NSFC (Grant Nos.
41877291, 41472293, 41672356, 41702331, 41772386), the
135 Strategic Program of IMHE, CAS (Grant No. SDS-
135-1704), the ‘‘Belt & Road” International Cooperation
Team Project of CAS (Su Lijun) and the Key Research
and Development Projects of Sichuan Province (Grant
no. 2017SZ0041) is acknowledged.
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