• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.261-277
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• 1999

The horizontal and vertical earth pressures in backfill space which is narrowly excavated like ditch are affected by the share of ditch backfill space and the wall friction between excavated surface and backfill soil. In this paper, for the excavated surface the Handy's equation of a symmetric vertical case and the Kellogg's equation of a symmetric sloped one are modified to show the minor principal stress arch for the unsymmetrical excavated backfill space. Compared with the soil test box result, a similarity in magnitude and distribution of backfill earth pressure shows that the earth pressure has been observed. The backfill earth pressure in unsymmetrically sloped space has been shown twice as much as the one in vertically excavated space and also remarkable decline of arching for the former case. It is verified that the earth pressure equation should account the shape and size of backfill space to calculate the earth pressure for similar structure to the one handled in this study.