Active earth pressure on retaining wall considering the heterogeneity and anisotropy of soil and seismic effect

In the stability analysis of geotechnical engineering, it is generally assumed that the soil material is homogeneous and isotropic. As a matter of fact, because of complicated geological genesis and natural sedimentation, the mechanical properties of soil mass change significantly due to different spatial locations, showing obvious nonhomogeneous and anisotropic. To address this problem, this paper established the failure mechanism of retaining wall with nonhomogeneous and anisotropic backfills, according to the discretization method and upper bound theorem of limit analysis. At the same time, the pseudo-dynamic approach was introduced to consider the effect of seismic force. The solutions of this method under the same conditions agreed well with the published literature. The results of parametrical analysis show that the heterogeneity and anisotropy of the backfills have a significant impact on the active earth pressure. The increase of seismic coefficient, seismic wave period, and compression wave speed lead to an increase in active earth pressure. The influence of initial phase difference on active earth pressure shows an obvious periodic feature. © 2022, Central South University Press. All rights reserved.