What Retaining Walls Do

Retaining walls provide lateral support to vertical slopes of soil. They retain soil which would otherwise collapse into a more natural shape. The retained soil is sometimes referred to as backfill.

Photos courtesy of StoneWall Select from ICD Corp.

Retaining walls can be constructed of many different materials and with a variety of building techniques. This discussion will focus on segmental retaining walls as the structural material, but monolithically poured concrete walls, steel, timber, used tires, and reinforced soil are often used too. Return to Segmental Retaining Walls Terms and Conditions for use of ConcreteNetwork.Com 2005 Concretenetwork.Com. None of this site may be reproduced without written permission.

What are Segmental Retaining Walls

Photos courtesy of StoneWall Select from ICD Corp.

Segmental retaining walls consist of a facing system and a lateral tieback system. The facing systems usually consist of modular concrete blocks that interlock with each other and with the lateral restraining members. The lateral tiebacks are usually geogrids that are buried in the stable area of the backfill. In addition to supporting the wall, the geogrids also stabilize the soil behind the wall. These two factors allow higher and steeper walls to be constructed. Return to Segmental Retaining Walls

Retaining Wall Design

Retaining wall design and wall type selection is driven by several factors. These factors include cost, required wall height, ease and speed of construction, ground water conditions and soil characteristics. Other factors can include skilled labor and material availability, building codes, site accessibility, aesthetics, local building practice, etc. Ultimately, all retaining walls serve to hold back a vertical or near vertical face of soil that would, without adequate retention, cave, slump or slide to a more natural slope. Designing any retaining wall requires a knowledge of lateral earth pressure Return to Segmental Retaining Walls

What is Lateral Earth Pressure

Designing any retaining wall requires a knowledge of lateral earth pressure, the pressure developed by the backfill. It is the force generated by the lateral earth pressure that constitutes a large part of the load that the wall must carry. To determine the lateral earth pressure acting against the retaining wall, several soil parameters must be known in order for the qualified engineer to assess a particular wall design and its overall stability: soil unit weight angle of internal friction of the soil cohesion and plasticity indices for cohesive soils (for instance, clays) water table location.

Once the lateral earth pressures are known, the wall is checked for stability. This includes checks for wall overturning, base sliding, and soil bearing capacity failures. Improper wall design and installation results in failures of retaining walls. By understanding how a wall works, and how it can fail, it is possible to engineer a retaining structure that will meet all foreseen environmental, structural and construction demands. Return to Segmental Retaining Walls

Backfill Drainage Issues

One area that can be commonly overlooked, or at least underestimated, is the necessity to drain the backfill of rainwater and/or groundwater. Hydrostatic pressure can cause or induce retaining wall failure, or at least damage the wall. Drainage of water as a result of rainfall or other wet conditions is very important to the stability of a retaining wall. Without proper drainage the backfill can become saturated, which has the dual impact of increasing the pressure on the wall and lessening the resistance of the backfill material to sliding. Granular backfill material offers the benefits of good drainage, easy compaction, and increased sliding resistance. Weepholes and drainage lines Drainage systems usually utilize weepholes and drainage lines. Weepholes actually penetrate the retaining wall and drain the area immediately behind the wall. Weepholes should have a minimum diameter so as to permit free drainage; for large walls, 4-inch weepholes are common. Adequate spacing between weepholes allows uniform drainage from behind the wall. Weepholes should always have some kind of filter material between the wall and the backfill to prevent fines migration, weephole clogging, and loss of backfill and caving. Drainage lines are often perforated and wrapped in geotextile or buried in a granular filter bed, and serve to carry water to the weepholes from areas deeper within the backfill.

How Segmental Retaining Walls are Constructed

Segmental retaining walls are constructed without mortar or concrete footings. Instead, the retaining wall units are simply stacked on a shallow, granular leveling pad. This method creates walls that are easy and economical to install. The walls are structurally stable, yet they remain "flexible" to tolerate minor earth movement without damage. Segmental retaining walls offer many advantages, including rapid construction, horizontal and vertical curvatures, easy grade changes, a wide variety of colors, and sizes and textures. Some segmental systems use steel or fiberglass pins, clips or integral lips to create a continuous facing system. Some blocks are hollow, some are solid. Just about all block systems permit backfill drainage through the face joints. StoneWall Select offer a myriad of installation instructions including corners and curves, geogrid installation, capping options, and application options. Click here to see the installation process for a variety of applications. Return to Segmental Retaining Walls

Advantages of Segmental Retaining Walls

Photos courtesy of StoneWall Select from ICD Corp.

Segmental retaining walls offer many advantages: rapid construction horizontal and vertical curvatures easy grade changes a wide variety of colors, sizes and textures no need for a concrete footing

Some segmental systems use steel or fiberglass pins, clips or integral lips to create a continuous facing system. Some blocks are hollow, some are solid. Just about all block systems permit backfill drainage through the face joints.

Photos courtesy of StoneWall Select from ICD Corp.

Review the Stonewall Select Installation Process for a variety of types of walls. Return to Segmental Retaining Walls

When Gravity Alone Wont Do the Job

Photos courtesy of StoneWall Select from ICD Corp.

When the weight of units alone is not enough to resist soil loads, horizontal layers of geosynthetics are used to reinforce soil behind walls. With proper soil reinforcement and design, segmental retaining walls can be constructed to heights in excess of 40 feet. An engineer should be consulted for the correct use of geogrids. Very high loads can be supported with this type of construction. StoneWall Select offers a myriad of installation instructions including corners and curves, geogrid installation, capping options, and application options. Click here to see the installation process for a variety of applications. Return to Segmental Retaining Walls

Minimum Wall Embedment for Slopes in front of Wall Bases

The following formulas apply to the wall embedment depth when a slope occurs in front of the wall base. H' 20 = Embedment for a level slope (A) (minimum 6" or 0.50'[0.15m]) H' 10 = Embedment for a 3h:1v slope (B) H' 7 = Embedment for a 2h:1v slope (C) Examples: Wall Height of 10' 20 = 0.5' Embedment Wall Height of 10' 10 = 1.0' Embedment Wall Height of 10' 7 = 1.42' Embedment
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Retaining Wall Design

Retaining structures hold back soil or other loose material where an abrupt change in ground elevation occurs. The retained material or backfill exerts a push on the structure and thus tends to overturn or slide it, or both. The cantilever is the most

common type of retaining structure and is used for walls in the range of 10 to 25 ft in height. The stem, heel and toe of such a wall acts as a cantilever beam. The RETWALL program computes the soil bearing pressures under the base of a concrete cantilever retaining wall supporting any kind of backfill material with additional surcharge and concentrated external loads acting on the wall. In addition, the program analyzes the stability of the whole structure and performs the concrete design based either on the Working Stress Design Method or on the Ultimate Strength Design Method of the ACI. The lateral pressures are calculated by either the Rankine or Coulomb theory. Seismic design as per the Mononobe-Okabe approach. The program also provides the option to design a base shear key if the sliding of the whole structure is a possible cause of failure.

Input Data
The required input data includes all wall dimensions, backfill slope, concrete and steel strength, allowable soil bearing pressure, and backfill properties. The figure to the right shows schematically the input data required by this program. The program also offers the option of considering other external loads applied to the wall, in addition to the backfill pressure. A surcharge can be defined as an equivalent height of backfill. Concentrated loads may also be applied to the wall. This is particularly useful in the design of bridge abutments where beams or girders reactions must be taken by supports.

Example
Consider the retaining wall shown at left supporting a backfill material with an estimated active pressure coefficient of 0.45 and a surcharge of 100 psf. Find out if the section is adequate and design the reinforcing steel. Use an allowable soil pressure of 3.0 ksf. Output When the data is entered, the program automatically performs the stability check for the structure and designs the reinforcing steel. In this manner, the designer may change any dimension or property to obtain an adequate design. The program computes the maximum soil pressures present under the toe and heel, and compares them with the allowable soil pressure provided as data. The minimum safety factors allowed by the program are 2.0 for overturning and 1.5 for sliding. In the example, a shear key of 1'-0" depth was designed in order to increase the safety factor for sliding.

Procedure For the reinforcement design, the program computes the required spacing for the specified bar sizes in the stem, heel and toe.

A detailed tabulation of the stem design is also provided in the output, showing for each tenth of the stem height, the steel area required by strength and the minimum allowed by the ACI Code. This allows the user to optimize the stem width.

Earth Pressure and Retaining Wall Basics for NonGeotechnical Engineers

Richard P. Weber

Course Outline
This course is intended for a wide range audience and in particular, the nongeotechnical engineer. Therefore it is not an exhaustive review of the subject. The objective of the course is to discuss the three types of lateral earth pressure (at rest, active and passive) that apply to a wall and describe how each is calculated. The course then uses this information and discusses the method of calculating the active earth pressure force using the Rankine and Coulomb methods described in this course. The method for calculating the factors of safety for sliding, overturning and bearing capacity are discussed. Basic examples are provided to illustrate the concepts. This course includes a multiple-choice quiz at the end, which is designed to enhance the understanding of the course materials.

Learning Objective
When this course has been completed, the reader will be familiar with the three types of earth pressure and how each is calculated. The reader will also be familiar with how the total force resulting from lateral earth pressure is calculated and how forces are used to determine the factors of safety with respect to sliding, overturning and bearing capacity relating to retaining wall design. These factors of safety are three of the elements required for retaining wall design.

Course Introduction
Retaining walls are used for a number of practical reasons in construction. In order to design a successful retaining wall it is necessary to know how to calculate the forces that act on the wall and how to calculate factors of safety that will assure a safe design. This course intends to provide a basic understanding of the earth pressure that acts on a wall and how this pressure is resisted. Therefore the objective of this course is to familiarize the reader with: Calculating earth pressure Applying earth pressure to calculate the earth pressure force Calculating factors of safety with respect to sliding, overturning and bearing capacity

Course Content
The course content is in a PDF file Earth Pressure and Retaining Wall Basics for Non-Geotechnical Engineers . You need to open or download this document to study this course.

You may need to download Acrobat Reader to view and print the document.

Course Summary
Retaining wall design begins with the basics of understanding and calculating the forces that act on the wall. This course has provided an introduction to these forces and how they are applied to calculate appropriate factors of safety. In particular the reader should understand that: Lateral earth pressure acts to the side and is a function of the vertical effective soil overburden pressure and the applicable earth pressure coefficient. There are three categories of earth pressure, each dependant upon magnitude and direction of wall movement. These categories are: At Rest, Active and Passive.

 Two classical earth pressure theories in common use are Rankine and Coulomb. In addition to earth pressure, other lateral pressures might result from events such as surcharge, earthquake, and water. These additional pressures are superimposed onto the earth pressure to yield the total destabilizing force. Wall movement must occur in order to develop the full active earth pressure force. Retaining wall design is an iterative process that seeks to provide a wall geometry that produces suitable factors of safety for sliding, overturning and bearing capacity. Retaining walls must also be checked for tolerable settlement and global stability.

Disclaimer
The material presented in this course is intended only for general familiarization with the subject matter and for educational purposes. The course does not cover all aspects of the subject. Use of this material in any manner whatsoever shall only be done with competent professional assistance. The author provides no expressed or implied warranty that this material is suitable for any specific purpose or project and shall not be liable for any damages including but not limited to direct, indirect, incidental, punitive and consequential damages alleged from the use of this material. This communication is not intended to, and shall not be construed as, providing professional engineering in any jurisdiction.

References
1. Weber, Richard P., Personal Course Notes 2. Das, Braja M., "Principles of Foundation Engineering, Fourth Edition," PWS Publishing Company, Boston, MA, 1999. 3. Department of the Navy, NAVFAC, DM-7, May 1982.

Once you finish studying the above course content, you need to take a quiz to obtain the PDH credits.
DISCLAIMER: The materials contained in the online course are not intended as a representation or warranty on the part of PDHonline.org or any other person/organization named herein. The materials are for general information only. They are not a substitute for competent professional advice. Application of this information to a specific project should be reviewed by a registered professional engineer. Anyone making use of the information set forth herein does so at their own risk and assumes any and all resulting liability arising therefrom.