Design of earth retaining structures accounting for uncertainty

Abstract

In geotechnical engineering, decisions are made in the presence of uncertainties concerning the in-situ engineering soil properties and subsoil profile that are derived from the limited field and laboratory tests. Probabilistic approach can account for these uncertainties more explicitly.The report investigate the design of cantilever retaining wall first by the deterministic approach,

before extending to the probabilistic analysis using the Hasofer-lind reliability index and

performace functions based on different failure mode. The efficient spreadsheet algorithm for

the first-order reliability method, FORM for correlated normal and non-normal random

variables is adopted for the relaibility-based design, which is able to test for the robustness aand

accuracy for various non-normal distributions and more complicated performance functions and

also able to provide enhanced operational advantage and versatility.