Investigate the Behavior of Concrete Gravity Walls Under Seismic Loading and the Permissibility of its Horizontal Displacement

Many of the common buildings in civil engineering are affected by lateral soil pressure. Basement walls, foundations of the bridges, tunnel walls, walls of underground tanks and etc. are such structures that the lateral pressure of soil has a significant effect on them. Therefore, in order to limit this pressure, using of gravity walls, cantilevers, buttressed cantilevers and other similar buildings are common. Such walls must have a satisfying safety factor to prevent sliding and overturning, and also in order to control bearing capacity of foundations and control general stability of the wall and the soil. In addition to endure static loads, Retaining walls must endure loading caused by dynamic forces such as cyclic loading and also the force that is caused by the earthquake, which is probable to occur during the using period of these wall. For the modeling of weight retaining walls in this research, Plaxis 8.6 software was used and retaining wall’s behavior under dynamic loading was evaluated. The results showed that the maximum displacement happens at the top of the wall and the maximum horizontal stress is created at the bottom one third of the retaining wall’s height. The analysis also showed a strong dependency between retaining wall’s behavior and changes of mechanical properties of the soil that is behind it. Analysis were done by changes in the mechanical properties of the soil and changes in height of the wall, and a sensible increase in the horizontal stress was observed.