Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 164 (2023) 107642

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/soildyn

Analytical method for determining displacement and bending moment of

embedded cantilever retaining walls subjected to pseudo-static
earthquake accelerations
Ritwik Nandi, Deepankar Choudhury *
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai, 400076, India

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The performance of embedded cantilever retaining (ECR) walls, such as the diaphragm and sheet-pile walls, is
Sheet pile measured by the permanent displacement they experience during an earthquake. In the conventional design
Embedded cantilever retaining wall methods, the embedment depth is derived by checking the wall’s stability against a probable collapse mechanism
Earthquake
and applying safety factors. Thereby, these methods are incapable of determining the wall displacement. The
Performance-based analysis
Earth pressure
present study proposes an analytical method based on the pseudo-static approach for calculating the earthquake-
induced permanent displacement of ECR walls in cohesionless soils. A displacement-dependent earth pressure
mobilization relationship, where the earth pressure mobilization is a function of the wall displacement, is used to
derive the passive resistance on the excavated side of the wall. With increasing earthquake acceleration, active
soil pressure on the retained side of the wall increases and drives the wall towards the excavated side, which
causes further mobilization of passive earth pressure; thus, the wall stability is maintained. In observations from
past experimental studies, the required embedment depth is derived by assuming rigid rotation of the wall about
a point near the wall base and balancing the forces and moments acting on the wall. Analytical expressions are
provided for determining bending moment distribution along the wall height. The proposed results are compared
with those of the available experimental and numerical studies, and they exhibit good agreement, which sub­
stantiates the validity of the proposed method. Parametric studies were performed to investigate the influence of
soil friction angle, wall roughness, the magnitude of the horizontal and vertical earthquake accelerations on the
wall displacement and internal forces of the wall.

1. Introduction seismic acceleration. Conventionally, the design of ECR walls is

Embedded cantilever retaining walls such as diaphragm, sheet-pile,
and contiguous pile walls are widely used as quay walls, supporting
cutting slopes along highways and railway lines, flood protection walls,
retaining excavations, etc. Generally, these walls stand cantilevered
without any external support when the excavation height is less than 5
m, and their stability is ensured by the mobilization of passive earth
pressure in the surrounding soil, mainly on the excavated side of the
wall. The mobilization of passive earth pressure requires wall move­
ment, and the magnitude of displacement needed to reach the limiting
passive state is generally higher than the allowable strain level at a site.
The behavior of the wall-soil system becomes more complex during an
earthquake because the soil pressure on the retaining side increases, and
the passive pressure on the excavated side decreases with increasing
accomplished by employing the pseudo-static approach, in which the
dynamic nature of the earthquake force is substituted by equivalent
static forces in proportion to the maximum acceleration expected at the
considered site. The wall’s stability is investigated against a possible
failure mechanism, and a safety factor is applied (reduction of the pas­
sive earth pressure and soil shear strength, increment of the calculated
embedment depth by 1.2–1.4 times) to calculate the design embedment
depth under working condition following the Blum’s [1] method or
considering rectilinear earth pressures distribution as shown in Fig. 1(a)
and (b) [2]. In these methods, the soil is considered to be a rigid plastic
material; thus, the active and passive earth pressures are fully mobilized
regardless of the wall movement magnitude. Thereby, these methods are
incapable of calculating the wall displacement and structural forces, i.e.,
bending moment and shear force for a prescribed excavation to retaining

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: ritnandi@iitb.ac.in (R. Nandi), dc@civil.iitb.ac.in (D. Choudhury).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soildyn.2022.107642
Received 18 April 2022; Received in revised form 27 October 2022; Accepted 1 November 2022
Available online 12 November 2022
0267-7261/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 Technical Note

An Improved Method of Vertical Slices to Determine Seismic

Passive Earth Pressure and Its Point of Application
Ritwik Nandi1 and Deepankar Choudhury, F.ASCE2
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay on 11/09/22. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.

Abstract: This paper presents a new approach for calculating seismic passive earth pressure, its point of application, and the approximate stress-
state within the rupture wedge. The method of vertical slices combined with the limit-equilibrium (LE) technique was used as the framework for
the analysis. While the available LE analyses used the rupture surface of predefined shapes, in this approach, the rupture surface is derived
through the analysis. First, the mobilized soil behind the wall was split into thin vertical slices and the rupture plane of every slice was calculated
by enforcing the Mohr–Coulomb failure criterion. Thereafter, by adding those rupture planes consecutively, starting from the wall toe, the pas-
sive rupture surface was achieved. The inclination of the rupture planes is guided by the soil friction angle, wall friction angle, seismic accel-
eration, and slice-interface friction angle. The distribution of slice-interface friction angle across the rupture plane was presumed to obey a power
function. The exponent of the power function, the seismic passive earth pressure, and its point of application were derived concurrently by sat-
isfying the static equilibrium conditions of the slices and applying a boundary condition. The results show that the outline of the rupture surface is
guided by the slice-interface friction angle, and the shape is curvilinear for rough walls. With increasing seismic acceleration, the passive pressure
decreases, and the point of application moves predominantly downward for loose sands. The obtained results were compared with those of pre-
vious numerical and experimental studies and were found to show good agreement, thus demonstrating the validity of the proposed method.
DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)GM.1943-5622.0002488. © 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
Author keywords: Retaining wall; Passive earth pressure; Seismic analysis; Method of vertical slices; Limit equilibrium.

Introduction assumption of a planar rupture surface. In addition, Coulomb’s the-

In earthquake-prone regions, the accurate evaluation of seismic
passive earth pressure, its point of application, and the extent of
the failure wedge is very important for the safety and economy
of several civil engineering structures, such as retaining walls,
ground anchors, and foundations, because the passive pressure pro-
vides the necessary resistance against structural instability. More-
over, the location of the point of application is particularly
important, as it directly influences the overturning stability of re-
taining walls. Due to the static indeterminacy of the problem and
the rupture surface being undefined, the topic is complicated, and
the complexity of the problem further increases when the wall–
soil system is subjected to earthquake accelerations. Numerous re-
searchers (Okabe 1926; Mononobe and Matsuo 1929; Choudhury
and Nimbalkar 2005; Pain et al. 2017; Lin et al. 2017; Peng
et al. 2018; Nandi and Choudhury 2018, 2019; Chen et al. 2020;
Jiang et al. 2021; Kundu and Chattopadhyay 2021) have emulated
Coulomb’s (1776) earth pressure model and incorporated the effect
of earthquakes into their analyses through pseudostatic and pseudo-
dynamic earthquake accelerations. However, it is well recognized
that Coulomb’s theory provides highly conservative passive earth
resistance in the presence of a wall friction angle due to the
1
Ph.D. Research Scholar, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of
Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400076, India. ORCID: https://orcid
.org/0000-0001-8372-0182
2
Professor T. Kant Chair Professor and Head, Dept. of Civil Engineer-
ing, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India
(corresponding author). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2331-7049.
Emails: dc@civil.iitb.ac.in; dchoudhury@iitb.ac.in
Note. This manuscript was submitted on September 27, 2021; approved
on March 29, 2022; published online on July 11, 2022. Discussion period
open until December 11, 2022; separate discussions must be submitted for
individual papers. This paper is part of the International Journal of Geo-
mechanics, © ASCE, ISSN 1532-3641.
ory implicitly assumes a uniform stress field across the passive
wedge, which is known to be incorrect (Mylonakis et al. 2007).
In Terzaghi (1943), James and Bransby (1970), and several other
numerical and experimental studies, it has been reported that, for
rough wall–soil interfaces, the rupture surface is curvilinear
under passive conditions. Consequently, several researchers
(Morrison and Ebeling 1995; Kumar and Subba Rao 1997;
Kumar 2001; Subba Rao and Choudhury 2005; Shamsabadi et al.
2005; Liu et al. 2018; Baker et al. 2021; Wang and Xiao 2021;
Xu and Lawal 2021) solved the passive earth pressure problem
by adopting the limit-equilibrium (LE) approach and a curved rup-
ture surface of predefined shapes, such as log-spiral, circular, ellip-
tical, or composite log-spiral planar. The outline of the rupture
surface in these studies was selected based on judgment of the en-
gineering, and the passive earth thrust was calculated by balancing
the angular momentum of the ruptured soil block, which was con-
sidered to be a rigid body. Also, the point of application of the pas-
sive thrust was presumed to be positioned at one-third the height of
the wall from its base, while disregarding the effect of earthquake
acceleration, wall–soil interface friction, and soil friction angle. Lin
et al. (2017) and Pain et al. (2017) reported that the point of appli-
cation of the seismic earth thrust is greatly influenced by seismic
forces, and that it moves downward with increasing earthquake
acceleration.
In the past, various researchers (Janbu 1957; Shields and
Tolunay 1973; Rahardjo and Fredlund 1984; Zakerzadeh et al.
1999; Shamsabadi et al. 2013; Xu et al. 2015) have employed
the LE method of slices to evaluate passive earth pressure coeffi-
cients. However, very few researchers have investigated the effect
of earthquake. Furthermore, due to the indeterminacy of the prob-
lem, previous researchers have assumed a linear or nonlinear distri-
bution of slice-interface friction angle along the rupture surface, or
a smooth interface between the slices, in order to solve the problem.
It is well known, however, that unreasonable assumptions usually

© ASCE 06022025-1 Int. J. Geomech.

Int. J. Geomech., 2022, 22(9): 06022025

 Computers and Geotechnics 151 (2022) 104970

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Computers and Geotechnics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compgeo

Displacement-controlled approach for the analysis of embedded cantilever

retaining walls with a distanced strip surcharge
Ritwik Nandi , Deepankar Choudhury *
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400076, India

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The available analytical methods are inadequate to quantify the displacement of embedded cantilever retaining
Sheet pile (ECR) walls in working conditions owing to the intricacies present in the problem. The complexity of the problem
Embedded cantilever wall further increases in the presence of a surface surcharge loading because, the loading intensity, width of the strip,
Earth pressure
and its distance from the wall significantly influence the wall behavior. This article presents an analytical method
Surcharge load
Retaining wall
for the displacement-controlled analysis of rigid ECR walls in cohesionless soils, with a uniform strip surcharge
Displacement-based method placed on the backfill surface. The proposed method can be used to calculate the required embedment depth and
the structural forces of an ECR wall while the wall displacement is prescribed. Alternatively, the wall
displacement can be determined when the embedment depth, retaining height, and surcharge pressures are
given. A displacement-dependent earth pressure mobilization approach is used to derive the soil pressures on the
wall. Surcharge load-induced additional earth pressure on the wall is derived by adopting a suitable load dis­
tribution in the subsurface. The embedment depth of the wall is determined by assuming rigid rotation of the
wall and satisfying the horizontal force and moment equilibrium. Analytical expressions are provided to
calculate the bending moment distribution and the ground settlement profile behind the wall. The analytical
results are compared with those of the numerical analyses performed in PLAXIS 2D. A parametric study was
carried out to investigate the influence of the surcharge loading intensity, width of the strip, its distance from the
wall, soil friction angle, wall roughness on the wall displacement and bending moment.

1. Introduction
Embedded cantilever retaining (ECR) walls (sheet pile walls, dia­
phragm walls, contiguous pile wall, etc.) are mainly used as makeshift or
permanent structures to hold back the ground when there is a sudden
change in elevation, like, supporting excavation, stabilizing cutting
slope along with the railway and highway, embankment support system,
flood protection wall, etc. These walls draw support from the passive
resistance of the soil and can stand up to a height less than 5 m without
any external supports (Conte et al., 2017). Uncontrolled displacement of
these walls adversely affects their performance and can disturb the
stability of adjacent structures, which eventually results in significant
economic losses. Accordingly, for most earth retaining structures, the
serviceability limit state of displacement becomes the governing crite­
rion for satisfactory performance of the walls (BS, 8002). Therefore, a
simple to use design method that takes care of the safety and service­
ability of ECR walls is highly desirable. Several researchers (Blum, 1931;
King, 1995; Day, 1999; Madabhushi and Chandrasekaran, 2005;
Choudhury et al., 2006; Babu and Basha, 2008 Conti and Viggiani, 2013;
Conte et al., 2017; Conte and Troncone, 2018; Nandi and Choudhury,
2019) have proposed analytical methods based on the theory of collapse
for the analysis and design of ECR walls. In these methods, the soil mass
is assumed to be a rigid plastic material, and the earth pressures on both
sides of the wall are fully mobilized irrespective of the magnitude of wall
displacement. Accordingly, the distribution of earth pressures along the
wall depth is considered as either linear or rectilinear. Above all, the
serviceability limit state of the wall is constantly disregarded in these
methods. Factor of safeties in different forms and shapes, e.g., extending
the design embedment depth by 20%, reduction of passive force, and soil
shear strength by empirical factors Fp and Fs, respectively, are used
regularly to prevent excessive wall displacement under working condi­
tions, and keep it within the allowable limit. However, indiscriminate
use of such factors causes either unsafe or uneconomic design depending
on the stipulated limit of wall displacement in a project.
The complexity of the problem further increases in the presence of
surface surcharge loading because the intensity of the load, the width of

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: ritnandi@iitb.ac.in (R. Nandi), dc@civil.iitb.ac.in (D. Choudhury).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compgeo.2022.104970
Received 19 March 2022; Received in revised form 2 August 2022; Accepted 8 August 2022
0266-352X/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 Evaluation of Passive Earth Resistance Using an Improved
Limit Equilibrium Method of Slices
Ritwik Nandi1 and Deepankar Choudhury, F.ASCE2
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by "Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay" on 08/26/21. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.

Abstract: The present study proposes a new approach to solve passive earth pressure problems using the method of slices, coupled with the
limit equilibrium (LE) technique. Unlike existing LE studies that adopted failure surfaces of predetermined shapes, here, the backfill was
discretized into thin vertical slices, and the Mohr–Coulomb failure criterion was enforced at each slice. The failure surface was then derived
by joining the failure plane of the slices starting from the wall base. Consequently, the failure planes became the base of the respective slices.
The outline of the failure surface is governed by the soil, wall, and interslice friction angles. The variation of the interslice friction angle was
assumed to follow a power function, and the exponents were achieved by satisfying the static equilibrium of the slices and a boundary con-
dition. The proposed results were verified with the available numerical and experimental results, and they show excellent agreement. Also, the
results illustrate that the shape of the failure surface is majorly governed by the wall roughness and interslice friction function. For rough
walls, failure surfaces are composite curved planar, and the degree of curvature increases with increasing wall roughness. DOI: 10.1061/
(ASCE)GM.1943-5622.0002183. © 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
Author keywords: Method of slices; Limit equilibrium; Passive earth pressure; Interslice friction; Retaining wall.

Introduction
A correct evaluation of passive earth resistance, the extent of the
passive wedge, and the stress state within the backfill plays a
vital role in the safe and economical design of many geotechnical
structures such as retaining walls, foundations, ground anchors,
and bridge abutments. The earth pressure theories of Coulomb
(1776) and Rankine (1857) are still used in geotechnical engineer-
ing practices regardless of the inherent limitations associated with
these methods. Although Rankine’s method is rigorous, it is appli-
cable only to simple problems. Coulomb’s theory is flexible in
accommodating complex loading and backfill condition; yet, it
overestimates the passive earth resistance for rough walls owing
to the consideration of the planar failure surface. Terzaghi (1943)
and various experimental studies (James and Bransby 1970; Fang
et al. 1994, 1997) reported that for rough walls, the shape of the
failure surface is complex, and it can be idealized as a composite
curved-planar failure surface. Numerous researchers (Terzaghi
1943; Morrison and Ebeling 1995; Kumar and Subba Rao 1997a;
Kumar 2001; Subba Rao and Choudhury 2005; Patki et al. 2015,
2017; Liu et al. 2018) dealt with passive earth pressure problems
using the limit equilibrium (LE) approach and by adopting a curved
failure surface of predetermined shapes, that is, the arc of a log spi-
ral, circle, ellipse, or a composite log spiral planar. In these studies,
passive earth pressure coefficients were determined by satisfying
the moment equilibrium of the mobilized passive wedge. Except
1
Ph.D. Research Scholar, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of
Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400076, India. ORCID: https://orcid
.org/0000-0001-8372-0182.
2
Professor T. Kant Chair Professor and Head, Dept. of Civil Engineer-
ing, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400076, India
(corresponding author). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2331-7049.
Email: dc@civil.iitb.ac.in; dchoudhury@iitb.ac.in
Note. This manuscript was submitted on December 7, 2020; approved
on June 29, 2021; published online on August 26, 2021. Discussion period
open until January 26, 2022; separate discussions must be submitted for in-
dividual papers. This paper is part of the International Journal of Geome-
chanics, © ASCE, ISSN 1532-3641.
the Rankine theory, none of the prior mentioned studies reveal
the stress state within the backfill wedge and the Mohr–Coulomb
failure criterion was not enforced along the failure surface.
Various researchers have used the LE method of slices to solve
passive earth pressure problems in the recent past. Apart from the
passive thrust, an approximate stress state within the backfill in
the form of slice interface normal and shear forces can be evaluated
from these studies. Although the method of slices problem is inde-
terminate in nature, researchers have made various assumptions to
resolve it successfully. However, these assumptions often lead to
unreasonable outcomes (Ching and Fredlund 1983). Janbu (1957)
and Shields and Tolunay (1973) considered a smooth slice inter-
face, whereas Rahardjo and Fredlund (1984) and Zakerzadeh
et al. (1999) adopted nonlinear and linear variations, respectively.
Kumar and Subba Rao (1997b) considered a polynomial function
to represent the variation of interslice friction angle in the backfill.
However, all these researchers considered the failure surfaces of
predetermined shapes, and the Mohr–Coulomb failure criterion
was not applied along the surfaces. Thereby, the inclination angle
of the failure plane (slice base) of each slice is governed by the cur-
vature of the assumed failure surface, which is independent of the
stress state in the soil mass and the Mohr–Coulomb failure crite-
rion. Shamsabadi et al. (2005, 2007, 2013) and Xu et al. (2018,
2019) also considered a composite log spiral planar failure surface.
Yet, they enforced the Mohr–Coulomb failure criterion along the
failure surface by back-calculating the interslice friction angle
from the slice base inclination using Mohr’s circle analysis and
made the problem determinate. However, a major limitation of
their studies is that they grossly overestimate the point of applica-
tion of the resultant passive earth thrust. The point of application
varies between 0.4Hw and 0.5Hw (Hw is the height of the wall)
from the wall base for cohesionless, horizontal backfills, carrying
no surcharge pressure. On the contrary, experimental studies by
Fang et al. (1994, 1997, 2002) and a numerical study by Shiau
et al. (2008) reported that at the limiting condition of passive
earth pressure, the earth pressure distribution is nearly hydrostatic
and the resultant passive earth thrust acts at Hw/3 from the wall
base. The existing LE method of slice studies either disregards

© ASCE 04021207-1 Int. J. Geomech.

Int. J. Geomech., 2021, 21(11): 04021207