NEW PROCEDURE FOR LATERAL EARTH PRESSURE CALCULATION IN FINITE SOIL OF SLOPING CONDITION

A new approach is proposed to evaluate the destruction mode and lateral earth pressure of the finite sloping soil based on the slices method and limit equilibrium method. The strength reduction method is used to study the failure characteristic of the finite sloping soil in front of retaining wall with the different slope distances and embedded depths. The proposed method takes into account the gradient,width between retaining wall and crest of the slope(WRWCS),and shear stress of soil mass. The accuracy of the proposed method is demonstrated by comparing the experimental results,numerically calculated results,and other theoretical methods. The comparison results show that the proposed method is appropriate for predicting the distribution of passive earth pressure in the sloping condition. At last,a parametric study was undertaken to evaluate the effects of the gradient and WRWCS on passive earth pressure and shear stress by the proposed method. The results show that the characteristic of the failure surface is mainly damaged along the bottom of retaining wall and the toe of the slope under translation mode of the finite sloping soils,which is significantly different than that in the semi-infinite space condition. The passive earth pressure increases exponentially with depth,and increases with the increasing gradient and decreasing WRWCS. When WRWCS is 0,compared with the semi-infinite space condition,the passive earth pressure is reduced by 30% to 50%. The coefficient of shear stress in the infinite slope soil is 0.07~0.1 under translation mode. The proposed formulation can be simplified to Rankine's formulation of passive earth pressure when soil-wall interface is smooth and WRWCS is enough large.