Mechanics Research Communications 51 (2013) 51–55

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Mechanics Research Communications

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

Rankine pseudo-static earth pressure for c– soils

Magued Iskander ∗ , Zhibo (Chris) Chen, Mehdi Omidvar, Ivan Guzman
Polytechnic Institute of New York University, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study provides an analytical solution for calculation of seismic active earth pressure on the back of
Received 23 August 2012 a rigid wall retaining cohesional–frictional (c–ϕ) soil. The proposed formulation is based on the conju-
Received in revised form 4 December 2012 gate stress concept, without employing any additional assumptions, similar to Rankine’s original earth
Accepted 27 April 2013
pressure formulation. The effects of sloping backfill and wall inclination are considered. In addition, a
Available online 9 May 2013
closed form solution has been derived for the soil–wall friction angle as a function of inertial forces and
problem geometry for any given pseudo-static acceleration, as opposed to the constant value commonly
Keywords:
employed in practice. The net seismic active force calculated based on the proposed formulations is found
Earthquake
Earth pressure
to be comparable with those obtained from previously published methods.
Limit equilibrium methods © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Geomechanics

1. Introduction account for wall inclination in cohesionless soil under static load-
ing. Mazindrani and Ganjali (1997) presented a similar solution for
The estimation of seismic active earth pressure on retaining c–ϕ backfills that does not accommodate wall inclination or seismic
walls from backfill soil is an important problem in geomechanics. loading. Stress-based formulations have recently been employed
Soil strength is typically defined according to the Mohr–Coulomb to address pseudo-static loading for cohesionless soil (Mylonakis
failure criterion using the parameters c, for cohesion, and  for et al., 2007; Evangelista et al., 2010; Kloukinas and Mylonakis,
friction. Mononobe–Okabe (M–O) analysis has provided a pop- 2011, and Iskander et al., 2013). Richards and Shi (1994) presented
ular solution to the problem for cohesionless soil only (Okabe, a plasticity-based solution to calculate seismic lateral pressure
1924; Mononobe and Matsuo, 1929). The M–O method calculates limited to vertical walls retaining horizontal c–ϕ backfill. In the
pseudo-static earth pressures behind a retaining wall using an present study, the conjugate stress principle is employed to extend
extension of Coulomb’s 1776 limit equilibrium analysis (Heyman, Rankine’s classic earth pressure formulation to pseudo-static seis-
1997). Caltabiano et al. (2012) extended M–O to account for sur- mic analysis of lateral earth pressure behind inclined rigid earth
charge. Saran and Prakash (1968) and Saran and Gupta (2003) retaining walls, supporting sloped c–ϕ backfills.
extended M–O to evaluate seismic earth pressure on retaining
wall supporting c–ϕ soils. However, in these approaches pressure
due to the contributions of friction and cohesion are optimized
separately, which can produce two distinct failure planes. More 2. Analytical formulation
recently, Shukla et al. (2009) extended Coulomb’s expression for
the seismic force on walls supporting c–ϕ backfill; however, the The implied assumption of Rankine’s solution for the static case
solution neglects soil–wall friction. is that the horizontal displacement of the wall and soil follow
Stress based formulations such as the commonly used Rankine each other. Therefore, the calculated free-field stress in the soil
(1857) static earth pressure formulation can potentially overcome is assumed equal to the stress applied to the wall. This is gener-
the drawbacks of the available Coulomb based approaches, because ally not true, and the stresses adjacent to the wall are expected to
they do not require specifying failure kinematics (Huntington, be different from that of the free field (Richards et al., 1999; Paik
1957). The original Rankine stress formulation considered the and Salgado, 2003; Nakamura, 2006). However, following Rankine’s
lateral thrust behind a vertical retaining wall under geostatic original work we assume that the stress field adjacent to the wall
loading conditions. Chu (1991) extended Rankine’s equation to is the same as that in the free field, neglecting the errors.
Earthquake loading is simulated using uniform pseudo-static
horizontal and vertical accelerations ah = kh g and av = kv g, where kh
and kv are the horizontal and vertical seismic coefficients, respec-
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 718 260 3016; fax: +718.260.3433. tively. These accelerations introduce inertial body forces on the
E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Iskander). wall, in addition to the static lateral earth pressure.

0093-6413/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mechrescom.2013.04.010
52 M. Iskander et al. / Mechanics Research Communications 51 (2013) 51–55

Fig. 3. Prism used to derive lateral earth pressure from conjugate stress planes.

Fig. 1. Problem geometry and conjugate stress state in a soil element of the backfill.
stress,  that includes inertial effects (Fig. 1) can be calculated
using the following relation:
    z cos ˇ cos(ˇ + ) 
 =  z cos( + ˇ) = (1 ± kv )
The wall under consideration is a rigid, inclined wall with an cos  cos(ˇ + )
inclination of ω retaining a c–ϕ backfill of surface slope ˇ and unit
weight , internal friction angle ϕ, and cohesion c, as shown in cos ˇ
= z(1 ± kv ) (4)
Fig. 1. The soil is assumed to obey a Mohr–Coulomb failure crite- cos 
rion. The combined action of gravitational acceleration, g, and the
horizontal and vertical pseudo-static accelerations, ah and av can Rankine (1858) conjugate stress principle states that “if the
be represented by a single acceleration field acting at an angle  to stress on a given plane in a body be in a given direction, the stress
the vertical, as denoted in Fig. 1 (Lancellotta, 2007). Therefore, the on any plane parallel to that direction must be in a direction paral-
effect of inertial forces can be substituted in the static problem by lel to the first mentioned plane.” A soil element at a vertical depth
modifying the acceleration field to a modified value g , oriented at z below the sloping ground surface in free field conditions corre-
an angle  to the vertical. It then follows that  is also modified to sponding to the problem under consideration is depicted in Fig. 2,
  . The modified acceleration field g has a modified unit weight   with the four corners labeled as a, b, c and d. Planes bc and ad are
and is inclined to the vertical axis by an angle , which are obtained chosen to be oriented parallel to the ground surface, while planes
as follows: ab and cd are oriented at an angle  to the vertical, where  has
been defined by Eq. (2). The modified effective stress  acts on
 planes bc and ad which are parallel. Therefore, according to the
g = (g ± av )2 + a2h (1) conjugate stress principle, the stress acting on planes ab and cd
(which are parallel to the plane of  is parallel to plane bc. The
stress planes bc and cd are termed conjugate planes and the cor-
 a   k  responding stresses  and ˇ form conjugate stresses. Derivation
h h
 = tan−1 = tan−1 (2)
g ± av 1 ± kv and proof of the conjugate stress principle can be found in Wood
(1876).
The stress state on the soil element consists of  on planes bc
 and ad, and ˇ on planes ab and cd.  is obtained through Eq. (4),
 = (1 ± kv ) (3)
cos  and ˇ may be determined through the Mohr circle representa-
It should be noted the positive sign applies for the downward tion of the stress state (Fig. 2). The circle corresponds to a state of
direction and the negative sign applies for the upward direction failure determined by the Mohr–Coulomb failure criterion, where
the major and minor principle stresses at failure are 1f  and   ,
of the vertical seismic force. The overburden pressure at any given 3f
depth z below the sloping ground surface can be calculated along respectively. The conjugate stress state in Fig. 3 can be determined
the angle  on a modified axis referred to as z . A modified effective on the Mohr circle by projecting a line through the origin, O, at an

Fig. 2. Conjugate element and conjugate stresses in a soil element in the backfill (left); and Mohr circle corresponding to conjugate stress state (right).
 M. Iskander et al. / Mechanics Research Communications 51 (2013) 51–55 53


angle (ˇ + ) to the horizontal plane (Lancellotta, 2009).  and ˇ AEH = a cos(˛a + ω) (13)
are then determined by the two intersections of the projected line Contrary to the conventional assumption of a constant obliquity,
with the Mohr circle. Using the Mohr circle, ˇ can be determined ˛a from the proposed solution is a function of problem geometry,
as follows: pseudo-static accelerations, soil properties and varies with depth.
ˇ OA OC − CA OC − CA The calculated soil–wall friction is inherently the shear stress in the
= = → ˇ =  (5) soil at the soil–wall interface, and not an intrinsic interface friction
ˇ OB OC + CB OC + CB
with physical interpretation (Iskander et al., 2013). The resulting
Further manipulation of the above derivation using the Mohr circle stress distribution is nonlinear due to the quadratic form of the
of stress yields: formulation.

ˇ 2 cos  cos( + ˇ) 3. Horizontal thrust

= Ja − 1 (6)
ˇ z(1 ± kv ) cos ˇ
The net value of the horizontal seismic earth thrust, PAEH , as well
where Ja is equal to as the point of its application can be obtained through numerical
⎛  ⎞
z cos ˇ cos(ˇ + )(1 ± kv )
⎜ + c cos  sin  ⎟
⎜ cos  ⎟
1 ⎜ ⎟(7)
Ja =
cos2  ⎜   ⎟
⎝ −  2 z2 cos2 ˇ(1 ± k )2 cos2 (ˇ + ) − cos2  + c2 cos2  + 2cz cos  sin  cos ˇ cos(ˇ + )(1 ± kv ) ⎠
v 2 cos  cos 

Once the stresses on the conjugate planes have been deter-

mined, one can obtain the stress states on any other plane using integration of the lateral thrust (Eq. (13)) along the length of the
the Mohr circle of stresses or the ellipse of stresses (Cain, 1916). wall. To simplify the problem, it is assumed that the horizontal
The solution obtained in Eq. (6) is identical to Rankine type static stress distribution follows a linear trend from the heel to the top
solutions including Rankine (1857), Chu (1991), and Mazindrani of the wall. Richards and Shi (1994) determined that the horizontal
and Ganjali (1997) for both cohesionless (c = 0,  = 0) and cohesive earth thrust obtained by including the surcharge weight of the soil
soils ( = 0, w = 0), which further supports the generalized nature of above the tension crack is nearly equal to that obtained assuming

that AEH follows a linear trend from the heel to the top of the wall.
the derived solution.
Consider the soil element depicted in Fig. 3, which is a prism Hence, an acceptable approximation of the horizontal component
formed by slicing the conjugate soil element in Fig. 2 along line of the lateral earth thrust can be derived as:
bb parallel to the wall. The stress state on the prism comprises 1 
of  and ˇ which are the conjugate stresses already determined PAEH =   H (14)
2 AEH(z=H ) l
by Eqs. (4) and (6). The obliquity of the conjugate stresses and 
ˇ is (ˇ + ) as shown on Fig. 3. a is the stress acting on the wall H
Hl = (15)
and ˛ is its orientation with respect to the normal of the wall. The cos(ω)
prism under consideration is in pseudo-static equilibrium under
the applied stresses. a can be obtained by considering the force cos(ˇ − ω)
equilibrium of the prism along the direction normal to the wall H = H (16)
cos ˇ cos ω
(normal to bb ) and taking the length of ab equal to unit length in
Fig. 3, as follows: where H is the height of the wall, Hl is the length of the wall and H’ is
the distance between the heel of the retaining wall and its backfill
cos(ˇ + ) sin2 ( + ω) slope surface. The point of application of the horizontal active earth
a cos ˛ =  + ˇ cos(ˇ − ω) (8)
cos(ˇ − ω) cos(ˇ − ω) thrust PAEH is at 1/3Hl along the length of the wall.

Combining Eq. (8) with Eqs. (4) and (6) and manipulating the result-
ing expression yields:
 
cos ˇ(1 ± kv )(sin2 ( + ω) − cos2 (ˇ − ω)) 2(Ja /z) cos2 (ˇ − ω)
a = zKa = z + (9)
cos ˛ cos(ˇ + ) cos() cos ˛

cos ˇ(1 ± kv )(sin2 ( + ω) − cos2 (ˇ − ω)) 2(Ja /z) cos2 (ˇ − ω)

Ka = + (10)
cos ˛ cos(ˇ + ) cos() cos ˛
˛a can be obtained by considering equilibrium of the prism in the
vertical direction, as follows:
4. Comparison with available solutions
cos(ˇ + ) cos( + ω) sin( + ω)
a sin ˛ =  + ˇ sin(ˇ − ω) (11) It is known that under static conditions Rankine and Coulomb
cos(ˇ − ω) cos(ˇ − ω)
solutions yield identical results if a planar failure surface is
The obliquity of the earth thrust, ˛, is assumed constant in most employed in Coulomb and a common soil–wall friction angle is
earth pressure solutions (e.g. ˛ = ı = 2/3). The obliquity can be cal- adopted. Similarly, under seismic conditions comparison of the
culated in the proposed formulation by dividing of Eq. (11) by Eq. proposed formulations yields identical results to the M–O solution
(8) yielding ˛a for active condition as: and that of Kloukinas and Mylonakis (2011) for the case of c = 0, as
 
−1 (2 cos  cos(ˇ + )/(cos ˇ(1 ± kv ))(Ja /z) − 1) sin 2(ˇ − ω) + sin 2( + ω)
˛a = tan (12)
2((2 cos  cos(ˇ + )/(cos ˇ(1 ± kv ))(Ja /z) − 1))(cos2 (ˇ − ω) + sin2 ( + ω))
54 M. Iskander et al. / Mechanics Research Communications 51 (2013) 51–55

Fig. 4. Comparison between proposed method and available methods for (a) cohesionless backfill (ı = ˛a from Eq. (12) in M–O method; ı = 2/3 ␾ in Mylonakis et al., 2007);
and (b) cohesive backfill.

shown in Fig. 4a, assuming ı = ˛a from Eq. (12) in the M–O method. higher than that obtained from Shukla et al. (2009) for the range of
Mylonakis et al. (2007) is close but not identical because ı = 2/3  friction angles (15–35◦ ) and cohesion considered.
is shown, although the solution deviates when ı = ˛a , particularly
as wall inclination increases. Comparison between the proposed 5. Significance of soil cohesion
method and previously published work for c–ϕ soils is difficult.
None of the existing solutions considers all the factors included In practice, many backfill soils have some amount of cohesion
in the proposed method; therefore, comparison is made for con- (Sitar et al., 2012), however cohesion is often ignored in design. The
ditions (ˇ = 0 and ω = 0) where solutions are available. The two importance of cohesion in predicting the horizontal thrust behind
dimensionless parameters c* and PAE ∗ are also employed, to facilitate
a rigid retaining wall is depicted in Fig. 5. It is clear that as cohesion
comparisons, as follows: increases, the horizontal thrust decreases sharply.
c
C∗ = (17) 6. Conclusions
H

A generalized analytical expression was presented for comput-

∗ PAEH ing static and seismic lateral earth pressure on retaining walls
PAE = (18)
H 2 supporting cohesive–frictional soils, based on an extension of Rank-
ine’s conjugate stress principle. The results obtained from the
A comparison is made of the results obtained from the proposed
proposed formulation compare favorably with existing methods
method and other published methods for c* = 0.05, Kh = 0.1 and
∗ obtained from the proposed for situations where comparison is feasible. The proposed method
Kv = 0 in Fig. 4b. The value of PAE
∗ is is the only available solution that accommodates wall inclination
method is consistent with previously published methods. PAE
and sloped backfill for pseudo-static analysis of cohesive–frictional
identical to that obtained from Richards and Shi (1994), but is lower
backfill. In addition, the soil–wall friction angle is calculated within
than that obtained from Saran and Prakash (1968) and is slightly
the proposed expression, whereas it must be assumed as a constant
in most formulations. Finally, the computed earth pressure is based
on the geometry and stress conditions of the problem.

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Defense

Threat Reduction Agency grant no: HDTRA1-10-1-0049 and The
United States National Science Foundation grant no: DGE 0741714.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found,

in the online version, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mechrescom.
2013.04.010.

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