As I mentioned in the first post, the wall is 30' tall. The details of it don't really matter - I am looking for a general discussion. But just so you know, it will probably be geogrid reinforced. Staging isn't a possibility and the soils are heavily OC, so strength gain is pretty small until...
In response to gandersen/Glen's question about FE versus LE, I would say that you have to look at each method as a tool. I think LE tells you about "failure." All it does is compute a driving force and a resisting force and divide one by the other to give you a FOS. This gives you an idea...
I am working on a project with 30 foot MSE walls on very soft clay. Limit equilibrium tells me the "slope stability" is ok as long as I use some additional geogrids within the rest of the embankment (behind the MSE walls). Traditional bearing capacity calculations tell me the bearing capacity...
I think you are to praised for building a spreadsheet. Programs are only as smart as the people that use them and building your own program is a time consuming, but highly beneficial way of understanding the method of slices.
One useful resource with the spreadsheet is "Slope Reliability...
