Coulomb and Rankine theories have usually been used for the design of retaining walls, in which the earth pressure has been assumed as to have a triangular distribution. In case of a rigid retaining wall that is backfilled with cohesionless soils, experimental results have revealed that the earth pressure distribution acting on a rigid retaining wall is different from the triangular distribution due to the arching effect, as well as the mode of wall movements.
To properly present the earth pressure distribution, some investigators have proposed earth pressure theories that consider either the arching effect or the mode of wall movements. Nevertheless, their predictions are not in agreement with experimental results with respect to all modes of wall movements.
In this thesis, an analytical method for predicting the earth pressure distribution has been proposed by considering those effects simultaneously with reasonable shape of failure surface. When the active earth pressure predicted by the proposed method is compared with the previously published experimental results, it can be concluded that the proposed method is superior to the other existing theories in the prediction of the earth pressure distribution for all modes of wall movements.
