Floodwall w/ water on the landside??

[CWEngineer]

I will be working on a floodwall design in a couple of weeks. I am doing research and trying to get as much info. for the design criteria.

One case I am going to design the floodwall is when the water on the waterside is to maximum elevation. However, I am trying to figure out if it is more conservative to place the water on the landside at the land elevation (higher elevation) or at the footing elevation (lower elevation).

By placing the water on the landside at the land elevation there will be greater resistance force on the floodwall, but there is also going to be more uplift forces.

From your experience do you guys know if placing water on the front (landside, footing) of a floodwall/retaining wall more conservative if you place it at a higher or lower elevation?

Do you guys know of any reference that discusses this?


THANKS

 

[SlideRuleEra]

For a given depth, forces are usually higher if you have saturated earth outside a pumped out cofferdam than if you have only water outside the same cofferdam. Of course a lot depends on the soil properties. What your are descibing sounds like the same logic should apply.

As for references take a look at the L.B. Foster website (sheet pile, etc. vendor) and request the "Foster Piling Catalog" (a free CD with .pdf documents on it). Here is a link to the page:

http://www.lbfoster.com/piling/technical.html

"The US Steel Design Extracts" and "Bethlehem Piling Catalog" portions will have information you most likely will find worthwhile.