Critical embedment depth of a rigid retaining wall against overturning in unsaturated soil

Critical embedment depth of a rigid retaining wall

against overturning in unsaturated soils considering intermediate principal stress and

strength nonlinearity

张常光;陈新栋;范文

【期刊名称】《中南大学学报（英文版）》 【年(卷),期】2016(023)004

【摘要】The overturning stability is vital for the retaining wall design of foundation pits, where the surrounding soils are usually unsaturated due to water draining. Moreover, the intermediate principal stress does affect the unsaturated soil strength; meanwhile, the relationship between the unsaturated soil strength and matric suction is nonlinear. This work is to present closed-form equations of critical embedment depth for a rigid retaining wall against overturning by means of moment equilibrium. Matric suction is considered to be distributed uniformly and linearly with depth. The unified shear strength formulation for unsaturated soils under the plane strain condition is adopted to characterize the intermediate principal stress effect, and strength nonlinearity is described by a hyperbolic model of suction angle. The result obtained is orderly series solutions rather than one specific answer; thus, it has wide theoretical significance and good applicability. The validity of this present work is demonstrated by