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Analysis of retaining wall in static and seismic condition with inclusion of

geofoam using Plaxis 2D

Conference Paper · December 2018

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Analysis of retaining wall in static and seismic condition with
inclusion of geofoam using Plaxis 2D
P. A. Yadav
Department of Civil Engineering, GH Raisoni Academy of Engineering and Technology, Nagpur,
Maharashtra, India
D. K. Singh
Department of Civil Engineering, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, Maharashtra,
India
P. P. Dahale
Department of Civil Engineering, Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management, Nagpur,
Maharashtra, India
A. H. Padade
Department of Civil Engineering, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, South Nagpur,
Maharashtra, India

ABSTRACT
This paper presents the study carried out to analyze the static and seismic behaviour of the retaining wall and
backfill soil. The lateral earth pressure on retaining wall plays an important role to ensure safety of such structure.
The dynamic lateral earth pressure on retaining wall during earthquake condition is always greater than static lateral
earth pressure and can induce large destabilizing force. Plaxis 2D software accomplishes the analysis of retaining
wall in static and seismic conditions. The retaining wall with backfill material was analysed with inclusion of
compressive material EPS geofoam, which was placed at the interface of retaining wall and backfill material as an
absorber to decrease lateral earth pressures on retaining wall. Parametric study of retaining wall has been done by
changingvarious densities of EPS geofoam and thickness. This study shows that inclusion of EPS geofoam reduces
the pressure on retaining wall in static as well as seismic condition.

1 INTRODUCTION pressure acting at 0.6H from base, where ‘H’ is height

of retaining wall. Wood (1973) considered the backfill is
The heavy soil mass is supported by retaining walls. In uniform and elastic; in this case, the dynamic thrust act
the field of geotechnical engineering, retaining at 0.63H.Pseudo-static approach, neglected the time
structures are used in highways, railways, tunnels, effect of dynamic force, dynamic amplification and
dams and basement of buildings etc. The soil at higher damping, Steedman and Zeng (1990) considered
elevation would tend to move down without any pseudo dynamic approach to calculate dynamic earth
structural support & it exerts pressure on the structure. pressure. A new approach has been carried out by
The pressure exerted on structure called as lateral Richard-Elms (1979) based on pseudo-static
earth pressure. The classification of earth pressure is a displacement approach. They derived an equation to
function of absolute and relative movement of the evaluate displacement of rigid retaining wall during
backfill soil and retaining structure. If movement of wall earthquake. Whitman and Liao (1985) identified several
is away from the backfill then pressure on wall known modelling errors that result from the simplifying
as active earth pressure and movement of wall is assumptions of Richards-Elms procedure of evaluating
toward the backfill then pressure on wall known as displacement of retaining wall during earthquake, they
passive earth pressure, both pressure can be computed found that displacement were lognormal distributed
by methods given by Coulomb (1776), and Rankine (probabilistic). Variability of ground motions, uncertainty
(1857) in static condition. In earthquake prone area, of soil properties and friction angle ‘ ’, combining all
earthquake can induce large destabilizing force in these source of uncertainty the permanent
retaining wall and backfill soil, seismically induced force displacement can be characterized by log normally
has greater influence on lateral earth pressure. distributed variable. In context to reduce the pressure
Mononobe-Okabe (1929) developed a method to on retaining structures the geofoam (lightweight elastic
evaluate magnitude of dynamic earth pressure based material) can be used at interface of retaining wall and
on pseudo-static approach and Seed-Whiteman (1970) backfill material. Hovarth (1997) found that the geofoam
suggested dynamic earth pressure can be divided into can reduce lateral earth pressure to even less those
static part and dynamic part, the static part act one third active conditions. The uniformity and compressibility of
of height of wall and the dynamic component of earth geofoam plays important role in the active and passive

1
state of retaining wall. The total lateral earth pressure
on retaining wall would decrease because some
amount of pressure will dissipate to compress the
geofoam. Bathurst et al. (2001) investigated the
performance of seismic geofoam buffers by carrying out
physical shaking table tests on 1-m high non-yielding
rigid wall with granular backfill and found a maximum
dynamic force reduction found up to 31%.

2 MATERIALS & METHODS

2.1 Properties of sand Figure 2. Bender element test result for S-wave for
sand at 16.5 kN/m3 density
The backfill material is considered as cohesionless soil
(sand). The specific gravity of sand was 2.8, the void Table 1. Summary of test results of bender element test
ratio at loose state ( ) was 0.82 and dense state on sand.
( ) was 0.48. The mechanical properties of sand was
computed in laboratoryby Bender Element Test.This Density Wave Velocity E
ʋ
laboratory test is based on wave propagation through (kN/m3) Type (m/s) (kN/m2)
soil sample. It consist of source element and receiver
element arranged in triaxial cell base. When high P-wave 153
15.5 0.29 27453
frequency electrical pulse is applied to source element it S-wave 83
produces a stress wave that travel through the
specimen toward the receiver element, it generate a P-wave 179
voltage pulse which is measured by receiver element. 16.5 0.30 38973
S-wave 95
Shear waves and primary wave will generate due to
high frequency electrical pulse, which is applied to P-wave 194
source element by producing a stress wave. The piezo 17.5 0.30 48923
ceramic bender element is an electro-mechanical S-wave 104
transducer, which is capable of converting mechanical
energy to electrical energy. Shear wave and primary 2.2 Properties of Geofoam (Extruded Polystyrene)
wave velocity determination in sands is important
parameter for analysing and predicting safety of various In textile term, the geofoam is called as Expended
structures located on it. The small strain shear modulus Polystyrene (EPS). The geofoam is a super light
of soil is a fundamental parameter used in various kinds material which is available in the form of blocks. As per
of geotechnical analysis especially in earthquake ASTM D 4439 the density varies from 11 kg/m3 to 40
geotechnical engineering and soil dynamics.For this kg/m3. It is very much compatible with conventional
test, the sample length was taken of height 12 cm and construction materials such as concrete and steel. The
the diameter was 6.0 cm. These dimensions were compressible inclusion at the interphase of backfill and
selected to obtain the best results from bender element retaining wall.
tests because a slenderness ratio is two or greater than
2 gives the best results(Camacho-Tauta, 2012). In this
test, the p-wave and s-wave velocity (Figure 1 and
Figure 2) are computed by dividing the length of the
sample by the time taken by waves to movefrom the
source end to the receiver end.Table 1 shows results of
this test at different densities of sand.

Figure 3. Hysteresis loss in Geofoam

The hysteresis loss of energy in the foam was

calculated according to ASTM D 3574–17 to determine
damping of energy (Figure 3). Thecompression force
displacement (CFD) procedure was followed. The
hysteresis loss and for used EPS foam it is 25%.The
behaviour of EPS geofoam under compression test is
Figure 1. Bender element test result for P-wave of sand affected much due to its density (figure 4). Higher the
at 16.5 kN/m3 density. density, higher is the compressive strength. In initial
linear response of curve, the stress-strain behaviour of
EPS geofoam is almost linear up to 1.5% of strain level

2
and reaches about 80% to 85% of total compressive using Plaxis for cohesionlesssoil instead of taking the
strength. Initial tangent modulus (Ei) is an important value of cohesion zero, it was taken 1kN/m2.
parameter of EPS geofoam, which characterizes the
stiffness. After linear curve the non-linear stress- strain Table 3. Properties of sand for Plaxis 2D
curve is called as yielding. This yielding zone is
extended between strain ranges 1.5 to 5%. In zone 3 Properties Unit Value
beyond the yielding, compressive stress increases
marginally with increase in strain with linear variation. In Unit weight kN/m3 16.5
present study, the specimens were tested for 15% of
strain. Therefore, the zone of work hardening is limited Young’s modulus kN/m2 40000
between this range of strain.
Poisson’s ratio --- 0.3

Cohesion kN/m2 1

Friction angle Degrees 32°

The plate element is use in this software to

represent retaining wall of thickness 0.85m. The
retaining walls are made up of concrete. The modulus
of elastic (E) for concrete (cement and aggregates) up
to 50GPa (ACI 318-08). It can be also calculated
according to grade of concrete according to IS-456
2000 (E = 5000 ), where is characteristic
Figure 4. Stress-strain curve of geofoam compressive strength.Table 4 represent the modulus
and stiffness properties of plate.
A cube of size 50mm x 50mm x 50mm was taken for
compression test of different density 15 kg/m3, 20 Table 4. Material Properties of Plate
kg/m3, 22 kg/m3 and 30kg/m3. In this paper the geofoam
of density 15 kg/m3, 20 kg/m3 and 22 kg/m3was taken Properties Unit Value
for analysis and the Table 2 shows the modulus
properties of respective geofoams. Axial stiffness (EA) kN/m 4.25 x 106

Table 2. Properties of (EPS) Geofoam Flexural rigidity (EI) kNm2/m 2.56 x 105

Properties Unit weight E ʋ

Poisson’s ratio(ʋ) --- 0.15
(kg/m3) (kN/m2)
Weight per area kN/m/m 20.4
Geofoam 1 15 2400 0.086

The static analysis of retaining wall includes only effect

Geofoam 2 20 4000 0.114
of gravity loads of backfill and retaining wall. The
geometry of retaining wall with backfill is shown in figure
Geofoam 3 22 5000 0.170
1, height of retaining wall plate is 6m and 2m embedded
in foundation soil with 0.85m thickness (Figure 5).
E = Modulus of Elasticity, ʋ = Poisson’s ratio,
Backfill material was 12m extended behind the wall to
show proper failure pattern in backfill.
3 RESULTS & ANALYSIS

3.1 Analysis of retaining wall in static condition

A retaining wall of height 6m retains sand is modelled in

Plaxis 2D. It is Finite Element software, plain strain
Modelling is suitable for analysis of retaining wall.
Bottom of geometry is fixed while vertical movement is
allowed. The material modelling for backfill sand in this
software is Mohr-Coulomb model, which required
modulus properties of backfill and strength parameters
like angle of shearing resistance and cohesion,
however strength of sand governed by angle of
shearing resistance only. The material properties of Figure 5.Geometric Model of Retaining wall and Backfill
sand would require for this software was evaluated in in Plaxis 2Dfor static condition
laboratory and is shown in Table 3.Plaxis works well for
cohesionless soil, to avoid numerical instability while The first step of analysis was to generate the mesh
formation and calculate initial stress at rest then plastic

3
analysis was done. After completion of analysis, the Table 5. Various thickness of geofoam
output contains deformed mesh (Figure 6), and stress Thickness (t) Thickness Thickness Thickness
variation in geometry of model. to height (H) Geofoam1 Geofoam2( Geofoam3(
ratio (m) m) m)

(t/H) = 0.5 0.5 0.5

0.0845

(t/H) = 0.167 1 1 1

(t/H) = 0.335 2 2 2

Figure 6. The deformed mesh of retaining wall and

backfill after completion of static analysis.

Plaxis 2D gave maximum pressure 29.72 kN/m 2 for

retaining wall of height 6m. In static condition, according
to Coulomb’s method, the maximum Pressure (stress)
at bottom of retaining wall ( )equals to 28.22 kN/m2
where is 0.285 and Rankine’s method gave Figure 8. Retaining wall with geofoam inclusion at
maximum pressure (stress) at bottom of retaining wall interface of wall and backfill in static condition
( )equals to 30.42 kN/m2 where is coefficient of
active earth pressure equals to0.307. The value of
obtained by Plaxis was found 0.293. FromFigure 7 it is
clear that the static lateral earth pressure on retaining
wall was found apparently same, which was evaluated
by Coulomb’s method, Rankine’s method and Plaxis 2D

Figure 9. Deformed mesh showing compressed

geofoam

Several models of retaining wall with geofoam inclusion

of different densities and thickness were analysed
respectivily.

Figure 7. Lateral earth pressure on wall by different

methods

3.2 Inclusion of geofoam in Retaining wall

The thick panels of geofoam of various thickness was

provided at interface of retaining wall and backfill which
act as absorber and reduce the pressure on retaining
wall due to compressibility. Table 5 shows the various
combination of thickness with different densities of
geofoam been taken for analysis. ‘t’ is the thickness of
geofoam panel. The thickness to height of retaining wall
ratio was taken in range of 0.085 to 0.335 for analysis. Figure 10. Static lateral earth pressure on wall with
geofoam of different density and thickness.

4
 The mechanical properties obtained by bender element
test at very small strain rate l ( % to ), the
shear modulus of soil at such strain rate is a
fundamental parameter used in various kinds of
geotechnical analysis especially in earthquake
geotechnical engineering and soil dynamics. The
parameters of backfill material, Geofoams and
Retaining wall plate are same as used in static
condition.

Figure 11. Percentage of reduction in static lateral earth

pressure on wall with geofoam inclusion of different
densities and thickness

From the above Figure 11, the average of percentage

reduction in static pressure on wall by inclusion of
geofoam1thickness of 0.5m is70.79%, by inclusion of Figure 13. Input acceleration history of actual
geofoam2 of thickness 1m is 79.23%, and by inclusion earthquake of 0.25g horizontal acceleration (in .SMC
of geofoam3 of thickness 2m is 84.17%. formate)

3.3 Seismic analysis of retaining wall From figure 14, it is clear that that the maximum input
horizontal acceleration is 0.25g gives a amplification of
Soil and structures are often subjected not only to static acceleration in backfill. The acceleration at the top of
loads but also to dynamic loads. If the loads are retaining wall found 0.38g while input at bottom is
powerful, as in earthquakes, they may cause severe 0.25g, the amplification factor found 1.52 times of input
damages. With this software’s dynamic analysis horizontal acceleration.
module, we can analyse the effects of vibrations in the
soil. The earthquake is modelled by imposing a
prescribed displacement at the bottom boundary. At the
far vertical boundaries, absorbent boundary conditions
are applied to absorb outgoing waves.For plane
strainmodels, the standard absorbent boundaries are
generated at the left-hand, the right-handand the
bottom boundary. The absorbent boundaries reduce the
box effect while analysis. A real accelerogram of
earthquake in standard SMC format (Strong Motion CD-
ROM) given as input to Horizontal prescribed
displacement to the bottom boundary shown in figure
13. The maximum Peak Ground Acceleration in this
accelerogram is 0.25g.The seismic analysis of
completed in two stage, first the Plastic analysis then Figure 14. acceleration spectrum at top, bottom of
Dynamic analysis. The time interval ofdynamic analysis retaining wall and Ground Level
is 10 seconds.
Permanent displacement in retaining wall during
earthquake can be evaluated by method of Richard-
Elms (1979) and Whitman-Liao (1985) but these
methods are only applicable to gravity retaining wall.

Figure 12. Geometry of retaining wall without Geofoam

in Seismic condition

Figure 15. Permanent deflection in retaining wall

5
Mononobe-Okabe (1929) has developed a method to Further the dynamic analysis of retaining wall with
calculate dynamic earth pressure during earthquake geofoam inclusion of different densities and thickness
based on pseudo-static approach that has popularly was done and Figure 17 shows the results.
known as M-O method. This method is extension of
static coulomb’s wedge theory to pseudo-static
condition. The dynamic earth pressure can be
calculated by equation 1.

Dynamic active earth pressure ( )

= (1- ) [1]

The coefficient Dynamic active earth pressure ( ) by

Mononobe-Okabe method can be calculated by
equation 2

= [2]

Seed-Whiteman has derived formulafor coefficient of

dynamic lateral earth pressure ( ) based on the
course of experiments
Figure 17. Dynamic earth pressure on retaining wall
= [3] with geofoam of different densities and thickness

= coefficient of active earth pressure

= coefficient of dynamic active earth pressure
= coefficient of horizontal acceleration
= coefficient of vertical acceleration
=Dynamic active earth pressure
= Angle of shear resistance
= Batter angle of retaining wall
=
= angle of inclination of backfill
= angle of friction between wall and backfill

The coefficient of dynamic earth pressure ( ) by

Mononobe-Okabe method is 0.502 and by Seed-
Whiteman method it is 0.456. The dynamic earth
pressure found linear but Plaxis 2D shows time
dependent dynamic lateral earth pressure shown in
Figure 16. M-O method give maximum value of
dynamic lateral earth pressure which would be safe for
designing retaining wall.
Figure 18. Percentage of dynamic earth pressure
reduction by geofoam of different densities and
thickness

From the above Figure 18, the average of percentage

reduction in dynamic lateral pressure by inclusion of
geofoam1 of thickness 0.5m is 21.58%, geofoam2 of
thickness 1m is 42.08%, and geofoam3 of thickness of
2m is 62.57%.

3.4 Inclusion of geofoam in cantilever retaining wall

A cantilever retaining wall of 6m height, 3m base slab

and embedded depth of retaining wall 1.65m was also
modelled in Plaxis 2D shown in figure 19. The thickness
of plate is 0.85m taken, first the model was analyzed
without geofoam and deformed mesh is shown in
Figure 20, the maximum displacement at top of
cantilever retaining wall without geofoam was found
47.5mm shown in Figure 21.
Figure 16. Dynamic earth pressure by different method

6
 Figure 23. Interpretation from stressed soil body
Figure 19. Geometry of cantilever retaining wall in
Plaxis 2D From above Figure 23, it is clear that the failure zone
can be trace by dotted line represent soil failure wedge
and present point of application of all stress (active and
passive). The lateral earth pressure is represented in in
Figure 24 which give point of application of pressure.
The moment on wall (stem) will be higher as compare
normal generalization of lateral earth pressure.

Figure 20. Deformed mesh of cantilever retaining wall

system

Figure 24. The point of application of earth pressure on

cantilever retaining wall

In cantilever retaining wall base slab is provided, the

soil above base slab increase the stability of wall. To
Figure 21. Horizontal displacement in cantilever
keep this point in mind, a minimum thickness (0.5m) of
retaining wall system without geofoam (mean shading).
geofoam is applied at interface of wall and backfill as
shown in Figure 25 and analysis was done which
The mean shading of horizontal stress in backfill in
reduces the pressure on wall as well as increase
Figure 22 shows few plastic failure lines that can be
stability by reducing horizontal movement.
also interpreted as triangular failure pattern taking place
in backfill.

Figure 25. Inclusion of geofoam (green portion) in

Figure 22. Mean shading of horizontal stress in backfill cantilever retaining wall at interface
soilat active state of wall

7
 GuX., YangJ., HuangM., GaoG., 2015, Bender element
tests in dry and saturated sand: signal interpretation
and result comparison, Soils Found. 55, 951–962,
Horvath J.S. 2010, “Lateral pressure reduction on earth-
retaining structures using geofoams: correcting
some misunderstandings”, in proceedings ofEarth
Retention Conference 3, Bellevue, Washington,
ASCE GSP-208, 862–869.
Kramer S. L. 2014 “Geotechnical Earthquake
Engineering”Prentice Hall, New Jersey, USA.
Kumar J., Madhusudhan B.N.2010,A note on the
measurement of travel times using bender and
extender elements, Soil Dynamics Earthquake
Engineering 30, 630–634,
Trandafir A. C., Ertugrul O. L. 2011, Earthquake
response of a gravity retaining wall with geofoam
inclusion, In Proceedings of the Geo-Frontiers,
ASCE GSP.211
Figure 26. Mean shading Geofoam inclusion reduces
lateral movement of cantilever retaining wall.

The analysis of cantilever retaining wall with inclusion of

geofoam reduces the outward movement of wall, it get
reduced as shown in Figure 26.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The static and seismic behaviour of retaining wall have

been studied in this paper. Coulomb’s method and
Rankine’s method used to evaluate the lateral earth
pressure on retaining wall for static condition. In static
condition, the Rankine method gives greater value of
earth pressure than the coulombs method, which may
be safe to design retaining wall. The retaining wall is
modeled in Plaxis 2D to evaluate earth pressure on wall
due to backfill soil in static condition and the value
found similar to Coulomb’s method and Rankine’s
Method.
In seismic condition, the M-O method is widely used
method to estimate dynamic lateral earth pressure. At
the conclusion of such intensive modelling of the
retaining wall with geofoam as compressible inclusion
at interface of backfill and retaining wall in Plaxis 2D,
many observations can be made and many questions
have been clarified. The major objective of this work
was to reduce the pressure on retaining wall. The EPS
geofoam in static condition reduces the lateral earth
pressure o retaining wall up to 78.06%, and it reduces
the dynamic lateral earth pressure on retaining wall up
to 42.07%. As the thickness of geofoam increases the
reduction in lateral pressure on retaining wall increases.

5 REFERENCES

AhmedR,2012 “Effect of Construction Sequences on

the Behaviour of aBackfilled Retaining Wall” IACSIT
International Journal of Engineering and
Technology, Vol. 4, No. 6.
Bathurst R.J., Zarnani S., Gaskin A. 2007, “Shaking
table testing of geofoam seismic buffers”, Soil
Dynamics Earthquake Engineering, 27 (4):324–32.
Camacho-TautaJ.,Álvarez-Jiménez J.D., Reyes-Ortiz
O.J.2012,A procedure to calibrate and perform the
bender element test, DYNA 79, 10–18.

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