Double Reinforced Retaining Wall Design

[dbnerds]

I'm currently trying to design a retaining wall for a bunker building. The wall can be loaded at anytime from either side. I felt a double-reinforced wall would be the right approach for an economic design. I wanted the steel assignment for both sides to be the same to ease field installation. However my designs equations seem to become invalid when this occurs. The equations have As minus As' AND rho minus rho prime (both equalling zero) and thus screwing up the equation they are apart of.

Can someone point me to a text or an example of a double reinforced beam with the tension and compression steel being the same (with mirrored concrete clears). Or just some general information on how this should be approached?

Many thanks,
DB

 

[AggieYank]

Easiest thing to do would be neglect the compression steel in your design.

 

[broekie]

Yes, ignore the compresion steel. As long as rho is less than rho balanced for the tensile steel, the effect of the compression steel is negligible.

 

[miecz]

I ignore the compression steel. I believe the savings are minimal. Try running your analysis with varying amounts of compression steel, say 10% of the tension steel up to 90%, and I think you'll see that it's not worth the bother.