Investigating the performance of non-yielding retaining walls adjacent to strip footing

Articles in Press

Document Type : Article

Authors

1 University of Qom

2 Department of Civil Engineering, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University

3 farjamSchool of Civil Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology

10.24200/j30.2025.67375.3450

Abstract

Existence of shallow foundations adjacent to retaining walls (RWs) is one of the challenges faced in construction projects such as bridge abutments, urban constructions, development of intra-urban highways. In this situation, it is expected that retaining walls are affected by the adjacent foundations and an additional lateral pressure is applied to them. This additional pressure, like the lateral pressure due to the backfill, is affected by the wall deformability. Therefore, its amount should be determined according to the possibility or impossibility of lateral movement occurrence in RWs. Based on this concept, the retaining walls are classified into two categories: yielding retaining wall (YRW) and non-yielding retaining walls (N-YRWs). A comparison between these two types of retaining walls shows that although the lateral earth pressure acting on YRWs is far less than N-YRWs, more significant lateral displacements should be expected in YRWs. This may disrupt the serviceability of the wall as well as its adjacent foundation. Therefore, in addition to using YRWs as a solution to mitigate the lateral pressure mobilized behind RWs, reinforcing the backfill is another solution whose effectiveness in mitigating the backfill pressure on YRWs has been reported in several studies. The effectiveness of this solution in N-YRWs is still unknown, while the use of reinforcement elements such as geocell and geogrid below foundations is known as an efficient method in improving their behavior. Hence, an experimental study was conducted on the non-yielding retaining walls (N-YRWs) including different arrangements of geosynthetic layers below the strip footing adjacent to them. For this purpose, thirteen reduced-scale N-YRWs were constructed with different arrangements of geocell and geocell-geogrid layers, and then vertically loaded using monotonic loading. Converting more footing pressure into lateral pressure and improving the pressure-settlement behavior of footing were found to be the disadvantage and advantage of installing geocell layer under footing located on N-YRWs, respectively. Moreover, the response of wall models to vertical loading showed that 3Bf can be considered as an optimal width for the geocell layer in non-yielding retaining walls to minimize settlement, maximize bearing capacity, improve subgrade modulus, and prevent excess horizontal pressure on the wall.

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Sharif Journal of Civil Engineering

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 14 December 2025

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