Lateral Earth Pressure on Foundation Wall

[GalileoG]

A client’s design criteria states that foundation walls with soil on BOTH sides, full height of wall, be evaluated for the effects of surcharge load that occurs on one side the wall.

I am having a hard time trying to imagine any significant bending moment occurring on the foundation wall when there is soil on both sides of the wall. The passive soil pressure would match the active pressure and surcharge in magnitude, perhaps not at the very top of the wall where there is zero passive soil pressure. Am I missing something here? How do I proceed here? Thanks!

 

[TLHS]

If absolutely no movement is allowable for some reason, or the wall is really stiff and won't allow it to go active/passive, you could be looking at a situation where you're looking at the at rest pressure on one side and the at rest plus surcharge at rest on the other side.

That seems fairly odd, though.

 

[PEinc]

There must be a very high surcharge anticipated for one side of the wall. It can be analyzed as a very low height wall (maybe 6" high) with the surcharge on the high side.

http://www.PeirceEngineering.com

 

[ishvaaag]

Or maybe liquefaction is anticipated to one side ... etc, there must be cases where the loadcase is warranted. To exact the solicitations you can use a elastic halfspace with the wall inclusion, then load one side, inspect the stresses.

 

[BAretired]

I think you should analyze the problem assuming surcharge on one side of the wall and no surcharge on the other side. It really is not an insurmountable problem.

BA