Assessment of Analytical Solutions for Calculating Lateral Earth Pressures Behind Rigid Retaining Walls Under Translational Movement

Geotechnical engineering projects involving retaining walls require the calculation of lateral earth pressures behind these walls. This paper assesses several analytical solutions available in the literature for the calculation of at-rest, active, and passive lateral earth pressures behind rigid retaining walls. The calculated lateral earth pressures from these analytical solutions are compared with the measured values from small-scale tests, full-scale tests, and/or numerical simulations available in the literature. Small-scale tests showed similar normalized at-rest, active and passive lateral earth pressures as compared with full-scale tests/numerical simulations. The comparisons show that the calculated lateral thrust using the method by Jaky (J Soc Hung Archit Eng 78:355-358, 1944) and Janssen (Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, 39: 1045-1049, 1895) with a low wall-soil interface friction angle well matched the measured at-rest lateral thrust in the field tests and those by Coulomb (Essai sur une application des regles de maximis et minimis a quelques problemes de statique, relatifs a l'architecture, Academie Royale Des Sciences, Paris, 1776) and Zhou et al. (Rock Soil Mech 35:245-250, 2014) agreed better with the measured passive lateral thrusts in the small-scale tests and full-scale numerical simulations than those by other methods. The calculated lateral thrusts using the methods by Coulomb (Essai sur une application des regles de maximis et minimis a quelques problemes de statique, relatifs a l'architecture, Academie Royale Des Sciences, Paris, 1776), and Handy (J Geotech Eng 111:302-318, 1985) and Paik and Salgado (Geotechnique 53:643-653, 2003) with appropriate wall-soil interface friction angles matched the active thrusts in both small-scale and full-scale tests reasonably well.