Chapter 32: Retaining Walls

similar soil located over the water level. Although the presence of water is considered by the program
it is suggested, whenever is possible, to avoid the presence of water on backfills due to economic
reasons. Drains or any other technical alternative may be used to solve this problem.
Use of vertical component for stability checks: The program allows to choose if the vertical
component of earth pressures will be considered for overturning, sliding or soil pressure checks. This
will depend only on the engineering judgment. It is important to note that the location of the vertical
component will be normally at the heel edge for all earth pressure calculation methods on exception
of the Coulomb method, which has a distance shown in the former figure.
If the EFP method is used, an equivalent lateral soil pressure coefficient will be calculated and the
inclination angle of the resultant force will be coincident with the backfill slope similarly to the
Rankine method.
Resultant out of middle third: The program does not allow this case because it generates large stress
concentrations and this is not recommended in practice (Foundation Engineering, Peck, Hanson and
Thornburn (2nd Edition, p 426)).
Resisting pressures: There are three options to consider the resisting pressures in the case of the
overturning check: Do not consider any pressure, consider an active pressure or consider a passive
pressure. The decision will depend on the engineering judgment. The different options are available
in the configuration window.
The height adopted for the resisting earth pressures will be equal to the depth of the foundation base
minus the undermining depth. This depth is also defined in the configuration window. Water level is
not considered for the resisting forces being on the safe side.
Adjacent footings: The program offers different options to consider the influence of adjacent footings
(rectangular footings, strip footings, lineal loads, and concentrated loads). The two available methods
for the calculation of the lateral pressures are Spangler (1956) and Boussinesq (suggested by Bowles,
1997). Both methods are based on the Theory of Elasticity. The program will automatically calculate
the lateral pressures of the adjacent footing and will add them to the lateral earth pressures. It is
important to note that the Boussinesq method requires the value of the Poisson constant and it will
have a big influence on the calculated pressures. Therefore, the value of this property has to be
selected carefully considering that it will be taken constant for all soil layers independently of the
number of adopted soil layers. Bowles (1997) gives different suggestions for this value.

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