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SURCHARGE INDUCED EARTH PRESSURE REDUCTION ON NON-YIELDING

RIGID RETAINING WALL USING RELIEF SHELF

Conference Paper · December 2016

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Vinay Bhushan Chauhan Rizwan Khan

Madan Mohan Malaviya University of Technology, Gorakhpur (U.P.) India Indian Institute of Science
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 Indian Geotechnical Conference IGC2016

15-17 December 2016, IIT Madras, Chennai, India

REDUCTION OF SURCHARGE INDUCED EARTH PRESSURE ON

RIGID NON-YIELDING RETAINING WALL USING RELIEF
SHELVES

Vinay Bhushan Chauhan1

Rizwan Khan2
Satyanarayana Murty Dasaka3
1
Research Scholar, 2M.Tech Student, 3Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay,
Mumbai-400076
1
E-mail address: chauhan.vinaybhushan@gmail.com
2
E-mail address: rizwancivil99@gmail.com
3
E-mail address: dasaka@civil.iitb.ac.in

ABSTRACT: Present study is conducted to investigate the effectiveness of relief shelf to reduce the lateral thrust on rigid non-
yielding retaining wall, through a small scale physical model test in laboratory. The height of the model retaining wall was 700
mm, and 5 earth pressure sensors were used to measure the lateral pressures along the height of the retaining wall with and without
relief shelves. A maximum surcharge pressure of 50 kPa was applied on the backfill. From the results of the study, it is found that
relief shelves are effective in reducing total thrust on wall. A parametric study is also carried out on 8m high wall having 3 relief
shelves by varying the width of shelves, through numerical analyses using FLAC3D. The study reveals that relief shelves having
width factor ranging 0.3-0.8 can reduce total thrust on the wall in range of 11-26%. Among all the cases of retaining wall with
relief shelves analyzed in the present study, retaining walls with shelf width of 1.4m (width factor of 0.7) exhibited substantial
reduction in lateral thrust, without leading to excessive deflection of relief shelves and backfill surface settlement.
KEYWORDS: lateral earth pressure, retaining wall, relief shelf, FLAC3D

1 INTRODUCTION behind the reduction of lateral pressures and design

parameter estimation are still in immature state. Hence,
Assessment of magnitude and distribution of lateral
present study is aimed to understand the behaviour of
earth pressure on retaining wall under various loading
such walls and to evaluate the effectiveness of relief
conditions had been an important area of research for
shelves in lateral earth pressure reduction. Rigid non-
geotechnical engineers, as the total thrust on wall is the
yielding retaining walls with and without relief shelves
key factor to decide the sectional dimensions of
are considered in the present study and modelled
retaining wall. By reducing the lateral earth pressure on
through small-scale physical model tests and full scale
wall, sectional dimensions of wall can be significantly
numerical model study.
reduced, which would lead to overall economy in
construction of retaining wall. Among various measures 2 PHYSICAL MODEL TESTS
to reduce total thrust on wall, such as use of expanded
To evaluate the effectiveness of relief shelf, small-scale
polystyrene (EPS) geofoam, geo-boards, rubber tyre
physical model tests are carried out with and without
chips etc., construction of retaining walls with relief
relief shelves with various combinations of location and
shelves is the least explored technique. However, many
width of relief shelves. To study the influence of relief
retaining walls have been constructed with relief shelves
shelf on lateral earth pressure distribution on an at-rest
in countries like India, China and Korea (Chauhan et al.
wall, 1-g small scale physical model tests are carried out
2016). A similar study was also conducted to understand
in a stainless steel tank having dimensions of 1.2m
the possible reasons behind the failure of a cantilever
length, 0.31m width and 0.7m depth. Details of the
retaining wall with relief shelves, which is located in the
experimental setup are shown in Figure 1. Six
heart of Hyderabad city, India (Chauhan et al. 2016).
diaphragm type earth pressure cells (EPCs) are fixed
Although such type of walls have already been
along the height of model retaining wall to get the lateral
constructed for more than a decade, the mechanism
1
Reduction of surcharge induced earth pressure on rigid non-yielding retaining wall using relief shelves

earth pressure distribution on wall. A mechanized 3 MODELING OF RETAINING WALL

travelling pluviator (Gade and Dasaka, 2016) is used to WITH RELIEF SHELVES
prepare uniform sand bed of 80% relative density
To evaluate the influence of relief shelf location and
(friction angle 39⁰ and bulk unit weight 16.5 kN/m3),
width, numerical simulations are carried out with a 8 m
while maintaining a height of fall 0.3 m. A uniformly
high wall (H), having 3 relief shelves of same widths
distributed static loading of maximum 50 kPa in 10 kPa
and located at different position factors, α (z/H= 0.27,
increments is applied on the surface of backfill using a
0.56 and 0.84) along the wall. The thickness of relief
hydraulic actuator, and the corresponding load
shelves is kept constant at 0.3 m. Figure 3 shows the
distribution system is shown in Figure 1. The set up
numerical model used in the present study.
facilitates uniform application of surcharge on the
backfill.

Fig. 3 Numerical model of rigid retaining wall with relief

shelves, all dimensions in m (not to scale)
Physical properties and chosen model for the backfill
(dry cohesionless soil) and retaining wall are selected
from a similar study on retaining wall with relief shelves
Fig. 1 Detailed experimental setup used in model tests (Chauhan et. al. 2016). In the present study, width
factor, β, of relief shelf is varied from 0.3-0.8, to
examine the distribution of lateral earth pressure at
various sections of wall and total thrust reduction, where
β is defined as ratio of B/h (B is width of relief shelf and
h represents intermediate height of section of wall
between two consecutive relief shelves, which is
considered as 2 m in the present study). With this
convention of notation, conventional retaining wall
without relief shelves is referred to as the wall with β
equal to zero. Fixed boundary condition at bottom of the
model and roller boundary condition at vertical end of
soils are chosen to simulate the field conditions of rigid
retaining wall-backfill system. Length of retaining wall
(across the plane) is considered as 1.0 m in the present
Fig. 2 Comparison of physical model and numerical
analysis with and without relief shelves analyses. The rigid wall is modelled as elastic material
and not allowed to move away from its initial position
Figure 2 shows the experimental findings of lateral earth to simulate non-yielding condition (at-rest) of wall. The
pressure distribution on 0.6 high wall with 2 relief interface between wall and soil is modelled as linear
shelves (width 10 cm each placed at z/H= 0.33 and 0.66) spring-slider system with interface shear strength
and static surcharge of 50 kPa. The earth pressure defined by the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion (FLAC3D
variation on walls with without relief shelves is also 2011). Once the model reaches equilibrium condition, a
shown in the figure. From the results, it is noted that static surcharge of 50kPa is applied in the form of strip
lateral earth pressure below the relief shelves gets loading on the backfill surface starting at 0.4 m (H/20)
reduced substantially. away from the edge of wall. The numerical model used

2
 Indian Geotechnical Conference IGC2016

15-17 December 2016, IIT Madras, Chennai, India

in the present study is validated using lateral earth topmost relief shelf itself. Once loading on relief shelf
pressure profiles obtained from experimental studies on increases, vertical pressure in the soil overlying a relief
wall with two relief shelves and without relief shelf, as shelf also increases, leading to increase in the lateral
presented in Figure 2. earth pressure on wall. However, in lower sections of
wall, lateral earth pressure has reduced significantly
4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
below the relief shelf (Figure 4a) compared to wall
In the present study, rigid retaining walls with three without relief shelf for β>0.5.
relief shelves positioned at α = 0.27, 0.56 and 0.84, and
β in the range of 0.3-0.8 are analysed with FLAC3D, to
evaluate the influence of β on lateral earth pressure
distribution, total lateral thrust, backfill settlement and
deflection of relief shelves.

Fig. 6 Maximum vertical deflection (mm) profile of relief

shelves
This behaviour of lateral earth pressure profile may be
attributed to the surcharge above the relief shelf is being
carried by relief shelves itself, and soil overburden and
static surcharge is not getting transferred to the soil
below the relief shelf, unlike in the case of wall without
Fig. 4 (a) and (b) Comparison of lateral earth pressure on relief shelf. It is noted that when β≥0.6, significant
the wall with and without relief shelves reduction in lateral earth pressure is observed in the
sections of wall lying between any two relief shelves
(Figure 4b). A substantial reduction of lateral thrust, in
the range of 11-26%, is noticed by provision of relief
shelves of various widths, as shown in Figure 5.
Although, for the relief shelves having β=0.3-0.5, a
reduction of lateral thrust in the range of 11-17% is
observed, this reduction is very significant for walls with
0.6≤β≥0.7. With further increase in β, no further
increase in reduction of lateral thrust is noted. Maximum
deflection of all relief shelves from top to bottom (S1, S2
and S3) are compared and summarized in Figure 6. For
a given wall, maximum deflection of relief shelf is found
Fig. 5 Total thrust and reduction in thrust on retaining maximum for topmost relief shelf and it decreases from
walls
top to bottom relief shelves for all retaining walls.
Earth pressure distribution on all walls with and without Maximum deflection of relief shelves has immensely
relief shelves are studied and shown in Figure 4. It can increased when β>0.7. This behaviour may be attributed
be observed that lateral earth pressure in topmost to greater part of applied surcharge is being supported
segment of wall increases with the increase in width by higher width of relief shelf and thickness of such
factor of relief shelf. This behaviour may be attributed relief shelves (0.3m) is not significant to support that
to the fraction of applied surcharge load carried by much of surcharge. Surface settlement of backfill is an
topmost relief shelf. As the width of relief shelf important serviceability criterion for retaining walls.
increases, a greater portion of surcharge is carried by the Excessive backfill settlement leads to collapse of

3
Reduction of surcharge induced earth pressure on rigid non-yielding retaining wall using relief shelves

backfill soil and leads to failure of structures founding height of wall, number of shelves and thickness of relief
on it or in the close proximity. shelves, magnitude of surcharge loading and position of
surcharge loading from face of the stem, etc. So, it is
customary to examine aforementioned factors before
deciding the number, position, width and thickness of
relief shelf to be provided for any retaining wall, to
achieve maximum benefit from the retaining walls with
relief shelves.
5 CONCLUSIONS
Present study evaluates the effectiveness of rigid non-
yielding retaining walls with relief shelves in reducing
the lateral thrust acting on the wall. Small-scale physical
model studies and numerical model studies on 8 m high
retaining wall are carried out in the study. A surcharge
Fig. 7 Backfill Surface settlement profile of backfill
load of 50 kPa on the backfill is considered in the study.
Backfill settlement near the wall is small (1-5mm) and Influence of width factor of relief shelf having 3 relief
it increases for walls with β>0.5, compared to wall shelves of same width provided at different position
without relief shelf (Figure 7). Although, with the factors, α=z/H, of 0.27, 0.56 and 0.84, is studied. The
provision of relief shelf, backfill settlement has reduced results obtained from the analyses revealed that
near the wall stem compared to wall without relief shelf provision of relief shelves on non-yielding rigid
(β≤0.5), but for walls having wider relief shelves retaining wall provides significant reduction in total
(β>0.5), surface settlement near the wall is higher thrust on wall. For 8 m high retaining wall with three
compared to that of wall without relief shelf. As relief shelves, the reduction in lateral thrust is observed
discussed earlier, with increase in width of relief shelf, in the range of 11-26%. It is also noted that backfill
deflection of relief shelf increases, which leads to higher surface settlement reduces due to relief shelves near the
backfill settlement near the wall. When β>0.7, rapid wall upto β=0.5. However, for walls with β>0.5, the
increase in backfill surface settlement is observed near backfill surface settlement increases with increase in
the wall stem, which is due to the higher deflection of width of relief. Also, it is observed that deflection of
relief shelf. Effect of provision of relief shelves on relief shelf is proportional to the width of relief shelf,
backfill surface settlement has continuously been and it also decreases from top shelf to bottom shelf for a
diminished with increasing distance from stem and given retaining wall with relief shelves. Among all the
achieved the same profile, as that of walls without relief walls analyzed in the present study, retaining wall with
shelves beyond z/H ≥1. Among all the cases of retaining 1.4m wide relief shelves (β=0.7) proves ideal, as it
wall with relief shelves analysed in the present study, substantially reduces total lateral thrust, without leading
wall with β=0.7 provides maximum benefit in terms of to excessive deflection of relief shelves and backfill
reduction in total thrust, without leading to excessive surface settlement.
deflection of relief shelves and backfill surface
References
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also increases but for a given height of wall and Code, Itasca, Minneapolis, USA.
surcharge loading, there exists a certain upper value for
Gade, V.K. and Dasaka, S.M. (2016). ‘Development of a
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reduction of total thrust on wall while satisfying the Reconstituted Uniform Sand Specimens’. Journal of
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