Types of Retaining Walls

Table of Contents

Gravity Walls

• Uses the mass of the wall to resist and stabilized the soil

• The wall must be heavy to resist the lateral earth pressure

  • Lateral earth pressure is the horizontal pressure of the soil that acts against the wall

• When constructing this wall, sliding, overturning, and bearing forces must be taken into consideration

• This wall is constructed from materials such as concrete, stone and other heavy materials

• Since the walls needs to be heavy it can be economically unfeasible

Possible Failures of a Retaining Wall	Force Acting on the Wall
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Concrete Cantilever Walls

• This walls mainly contains a stem and base slab

  • The base then divides into the toe and the heel shown the picture below

• It is constructed with reinforced concrete, precast concrete, or prestress concrete

• It can be constructed on site or can be prefabricated and installed on site

• Unlike the gravity wall, it uses less materials but the design and construction has to be thought out more carefully

• The is generally economically friendly until 7 meters in height

• Sliding, overturning and soil bearing have to be considered when constructing this retaining wall

Parts of a Cantilever Wall	Possible Failures that can Occur
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Piled Retaining Walls

• Constructed by driving reinforced concrete piles adjacent to each other

• This wall offers higher stiffness retaining elements that allow the wall to hold off lateral pressure in large excavation depths, whole in the ground, with almost no disturbance to the surrounding structures and properties

• Sheet pile walls are built with steel into a slope or excavation up to a required depth because it can not handle high pressures

• They are economically feasible until 6m

Main Forces Acting on the Wall	Large Excavation Depth
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Anchored Retaining Walls

• This wall is pinned at the bottom and top by either a cable or other stays

  • The cable or stays are anchored in rocks or in the soil behind the wall

  • This can be seen in the figure 1

• The anchors are driven into the material and then expanded by mechanical means or by injected pressurized concrete into the whole

  • The pressurized concrete then expands to form a bulb in the soil

  • this is what keep the anchors in the rock or soil

• the horizontal cable, rod or helical anchor resists forces that would cause the wall to be unstable

• this method is relatively complex but it is useful when high loads are expected and when the wall itself would needs to be slender or it is too weak to handle such load without any anchoring

Different Ways to Anchor a Wall

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References 

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