Investigation of contilever retaining walls behavior under dynamic loads using FEM

 In this paper, the behavior of retaining walls and it’s backfill have been investigated harmonic load with the help of finite element method using plaxis software. The wall has been considered to behave elastically and the elastoplastic Mohr-Coulomb model has been used for the soil behavior. Interface elements are placed around the wall to model the interaction between the wall and the soil. Beam elements has also been employed to model the flexural behavior of the wall. Absorbent boundaries are specified at the right and left hand side boundaries in order to avoid the spurious reflections of the compressional and shear waves. The analysis is conducted in the time domain using the Newmark step-by-step method to numerically solve the equation. In this research, the effects of the geometric parameters, wall rigidity, backfill rigidity and soil damping have been investigated. Furthermore, the effects of loading parameters such as amplitude and frequency of the load on the response of the wall have also been studied and the results have been analyzed, assessed and discussed.