Angle of Friction or Repose?? 2

[cap4000]

Has anyone ever seen the book by Marcel & Andrew Reimbert "Retaining Walls" 1974 Trans Tech Publication copyright in Germany. The book totally invalidates,disputes and debunks theories by Rankines and Coulombs "Granular" earth pressure formulas, active and passive pressures. With many experiments in it they claim Rankine and Coulomb pressures are too high!! Their lab exhaustive basis relies on the angle of repose of the material more than the internal friction angle. According to them the maximum ratio passive to active ratio is less than 3 with a friction angle less than 45 degrees. Any takers on this one.

 

[SlideRuleEra]

I'm not familiar with the book; but the finding that Rankine and Coulomb's 19th century work was conservative is quite reasonable. As science and technology have progressed, understanding of many subjects has become both more precise and accurate.

If a structure is designed using many of the "old ways" (Rankine & Coulomb in this case), it will still "work". It is just overdesigned - certainly not desireable for a "high-dollar" project, but just fine for something like an industrial sump or a residential basement.

http://www.SlideRuleEra.net

 

[cap4000]

I am with you SREra, but I have 20 books on soil engineering printed after 1974 with not one word mentioned about these discrepanies. I guess thats what makes soils such an interesting subject. No 2 Geo-Tech pioneers can ever totally agree with each other.

 

[BigHarvey]

Marcel and André Reimbert are well known french engineers who have worked quite a lot in the field of retaining structures and silos. They published a book in english in 2001 called "Retaining structures and silos experimental and theoretical comparisons" in 2 volumes edited by Lavoisier (

http://www.lavoisier.fr

)which is still available.

 

[cap4000]

BigHarvey

I stumpled across the Reimberts name again in a concrete design "silo" book by Fintel published by Van Nostrand. In it, Reimbert disputes the widely accepted "Janssen" soil arching formula with their own formula. I am beginning to wonder if their middle name is "precise"?.

 

[dgillette]

I have a slightly mildewed copy of vol. II, Study of Passive Resistance in Foundation Structures, gathering dust here. Believe I got it for nickels and dimes (US) from one of those catalogs of orphan books the publishers can't move....