OPTIMUM DESIGN OF THE SYMMETRICAL GRAVITY RETAINING WALLS

Retaining walls are one of the important applications in civil engineering. When the height of the wall is not too high, the gravity retaining walls, which are one of the retaining wall types, are widely used. Since the shear and bending moments in the wall sections are carried by the wall material in the gravity retaining walls, there is no need for reinforcement in the wall and more economical wall design can be made. Because many failure modes, design requirements and design constraints need to be considered together for the design of retaining walls, the problem has to be considered as an optimization problem. In this study, the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm, which is one of the heuristic methods, is used for the optimum design of symmetrical gravity retaining walls. Examples of different heights of wall and characteristics strengths of the used wall material are handled, and the effects of these characteristics on the cross-section geometry are investigated and the results are discussed