A Parametric Study on Design of Cantilever Retaining Walls

Retaining walls are mainly used in order to resist lateral earth pressure. If soil or fill material stands with an unstable slope angle, there may be instabilities and shear failures. This situation can be prevented with retaining walls. The change in the width of base required for a safe design with some geometric properties of wall (height of wall, width of wall and height of base) and soil (unit weight and friction angle) is investigated in this study. It is observed that the width of base required to have adequate factor of safety against sliding and overturning increases considerably as height of wall and unit weight of backfill increases. It is also seen that the effect of wall thickness is very small and with increasing unit weight of backfill there is no effect of wall thickness. Increasing friction angle of fill material decreases the required width of base as expected