Browsing by Author "Ermias, Tamirat"

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    Software Development for the Analysis of Lateral Earth Pressure and Design of Retaining Walls
    (AAU, 2015-08) Ermias, Tamirat; Alemayehu, Teferra (Prof.)
    Analysis of lateral earth pressure is one of the basic tasks that a geotechnical engineer deals with while analyzing or designing earth retaining structures. In the design stage, the lateral earth pressure should be estimated accurately and stability of the retaining structure be checked for different destabilizing factors. In order to analyze/design the earth retaining structure practicing and academic professionals have to go through tiresome and routine step by step procedures. Usage of commercially available programs to tackle these problems would be an ideal solution. However, such applications are costly and wouldn’t be the choice of professionals in developing countries, like Ethiopia. Different theories have been suggested by different authors to compute the lateral earth pressure that soils exert on retaining structures. Earth pressure theories suggested by Coulomb and Rankine are the most well known and termed as ―Classical Earth Pressure Theories‖. These theories have been considered reliable in spite of the limitations they have and are considered basic to the problem. One of the major drawbacks of the theories is that they assume the failure surface to be plane throughout. As time goes by, these theories have been modified to suit the different actual conditions and come up with better results. Bell (1915) has further developed Rankine’s equation to handle cohesive soils. Kerisel and Absi (1990) have developed a chart putting in to account that, the failure plane has got a logarithmic spiral at its bottom portion together with a tangent extending further to the ground. This thesis aims at developing software for the analysis of lateral earth pressure and design of gravity and cantilever retaining walls for external stability based on the theories suggested by; Coulomb, Rankine, Bell and Kerisel and Absi. The developed software, GeoLEPARD, helps in analyzing earth pressures and getting the right retaining structure dimension fast and simple. Outputs of the software have been compared against results of hand/spread sheet calculations. The comparison has shown that, with proper data entry, the software can generate similar output enhanced with numeric and graphical displays.