The interactive behavior of horizontal surface backfill and gravity retaining wall

This paper is to investigate the interaction of gravity retaining wall and horizontal surface backfill which is reaching in active state or in passive state. The Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion is adopted as the yield function and the associated flow rule is assumed for the backfill considered as an elastic-plastic material. The commercial elastic-plastic finite element method (ABAQUS) is applied in this work. Using contact element between retaining wall and backfill simulates the interaction of them. The influence of lateral earth pressure coefficients, the ground displacements, and the deformed backfill profiles is studied when the wall moves away from or toward the backfill horizontally. The external friction angle has littler influence on the deformed profiles in active state; nevertheless, it has larger change in passive state. The band zone of slip failure surfaces is presented clearly.