Investigation of linear and nonlinear of behaviours of reinforced concrete cantilever retaining walls according to the earthquake loads considering soil-structures interactions

It is known that retaining walls were severely damaged as well in the most recent earthquakes having occurred in the countries in the active seismic belts of the world. This damage can be ascribed to the calculation methods used for the designs of retaining walls in the event of their constructions and employment having been accurately carried out. Generally simplified pseudo-static methods are used in the analysis of retaining walls with analytical methods and soil-structure interaction are not considered. In view of these circumstances, in this article by taking soil interaction into consideration, linear and nonlinear behaviours of retaining walls are analyzed with the assistance of LUSAS which is one of the structural analysis programs. This investigations are carried out per LUSAS which employs the finite element method as to the Erzincan (1992) Earthquake North-South component and the obtained findings are compared with the ones obtained from the method suggested in Eurocode-8, which is still effective today, and Mononobe-Okabe method. Not only do the obtained results indicate the distribution and magnitude of soil pressures are depend on the filling soil but on the foundation soil as well and nonlinear effects should be considered in designs of these walls.