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Cantilever Retaining Walls: An
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Cantilever Retaining Walls: An Overview of the

Design Process (Part 1) Search ... 

By: Javier Encinas, PE | February 21, 2016

ASDIP RETAIN is structural engineering software for design

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of retaining walls. Retaining walls are structures designed
to bound soils between two different elevations. A retaining
wall is mainly exposed to lateral pressures from the  How to
retained soil plus any other surcharge. This article discusses Design Steel
the design of either concrete or masonry cantilever and
retaining walls. Composite
Beams Using
A typical retaining wall is composed of four main ASDIP STEEL
components: the Stem, the Toe at the front of the wall, the May 31, 2017
Heel at the back⠾�ll side, and the Shear Key. The images
below show the geometry of a typical cantilever retaining  How to
wall. Design
Restrained
Retaining
Walls Using
ASDIP
RETAIN May
22, 2017

 How to Use
the Pre-
combined
Load Feature
in ASDIP
Software
May 16, 2017
What lateral earth pressure theory to use?
 How Are the
There are two well-known classical earth pressure theories: Calculations
Rankine and Coulomb. Both theories provide expressions Managed in
for the pressure states described below. Rankine is a ASDIP
simpli⠾�ed version of Coulomb. Rankine ignores the friction Software?
between the wall and the soil, and it assumes a vertical wall May 8, 2017
face. Coulomb takes all these factors into consideration.
 How to
Depending on the relative movement of the wall and the Design a
back⠾�ll, three different states of lateral earth pressure may Fence Wall
develop: Using ASDIP
RETAIN May
At-rest Ko – It occurs when the wall experiences no lateral 2, 2017
movement.
Active Ka – It occurs when the wall tilts away from the soil
suf⠾�ciently to mobilize its shear strength.
Passive Kp – It occurs when the wall is pushed into the soil, Archive Blog
compressing the mass and mobilizing its shear strength.
Selector
In order to develop the full active or passive pressures, the
wall has to move, as shown below. For granular soils, the full
active pressure is developed when the wall top moves Select Month 

between 0.001H-0.004H, being H the wall height. Most

cantilever walls will move this amount as the sum of the
stem deǶection plus the base rotation, therefore it’s
Categories
common practice to use the active pressure in the design of
cantilever retaining walls, otherwise the at-rest pressure
should be used.  Foundation
Design

 Project
Manager

 Retaining
Wall Design
ASDIP RETAIN uses any of the theories described above. In
addition, the Equivalent Fluid method may be selected,  Structural
which assumes the back⠾�ll as a Ƕuid of a given density. Concrete
Design

How do you check the overall stability?  Structural

Steel Design
There are four basic instability modes to be checked:
Sliding, Overturning, Soil bearing, and Global instability, as
shown schematically in the picture below.
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Sliding – The back⠾�ll exerts a lateral pressure against the
wall. This sliding force is resisted by the friction between the
soil and the footing. and by the passive pressure at the front
of the wall. When more sliding resistance is required, a Receive
shear key may be provided. The factor of safety against
email
sliding equals the resisting force divided by the driving
noti侀�cations
force, and the minimum value should be 1.50.
of new blog
Overturning – The overturning moment from the applied posts.
forces must be resisted by an opposite moment produced
by the vertical forces, including the wall selfweight and the
weight of the back⠾�ll over the heel. The factor of safety
against overturning is de⠾�ned as the resisting moment Email
divided by the overturning moment, and the minimum
value should be 1.50.
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As an example, the picture below shows the ASDIP RETAIN
overturning calculations.

Soil bearing – The allowable soil bearing pressure should be

provided by the soils report, which already includes a safety
factor of about 3.0. The resultant of the bearing pressure
should fall within the kern to avoid negative soil pressures
at the heel.
Global instability – It assumes that a failure surface develops
under the wall, causing a massive disturbance and
movement of the soil along this surface. This check is a
complex analysis that falls in the ⠾�eld of the geotechnical
engineering.

ASDIP RETAIN generates the image shown below, with the

magnitude and location of the loads that affect the stability
analysis, sorted by load combination. The calculated safety
factors are also provided by the software for immediate
check.

The second part of this article deals with the typical loads in
a retaining wall, as well as the structural design of the
different components.

Detailed information is available about this structural

engineering software by visiting ASDIP RETAIN. You are
invited to download a Free 15-Day Software Trial or go
ahead and Place Your Order.

Best regards,

Javier Encinas, PE
ASDIP Structural Software

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By Javier Encinas, PE | February 21st, 2016 | Categories:

Retaining Wall Design, Structural Concrete Design | Tags: