Retaining Wall

The Retaining Wall module window is comprised of three panes. The left hand pane contains four input tabs, the center pane contains two output tabs, and the right hand pane contains the design summary and report navigation tree.

Project Input Tab

Name: Input a name for the retaining wall. This is for your information only, and is only used for the text report.

Date: Input a date for the retaining wall. This is for your information only, and is only used for the text report.

Description: Input a description for the retaining wall. This is for your information only, and is only used for the text report.

Backfill Lateral Earth Pressure Theory: Choose a lateral earth pressure theory to use. The options are explained in the theory section.

Include Bearing Pressure: Indicates whether the bearing pressure should be included in the analysis as a force. This will be represented as a distributed load acting on the footing.

Include Sliding Pressure: Indicates whether the sliding stress should be included in the analysis as a force. This will be represented as a distributed horizontal load acting on the bottom of the footing.

Properties Input Tab

Stem

Height: The height of the stem measured from the surface of the backfill.

Thickness: The thickness of the stem at the top of the retaining wall.

Change in Toe: The total tapering amount of the toe, measured at the base of the stem.

Change in Heel: The total tapering amount of the heel, measured at the base of the stem.

Footing

Thickness: The thickness of the footing.

Toe Length: The length of the toe. Measured from the base of the stem.

Heel Length: The length of the heel. Measured from the base of the stem.

Soil

Depth Backfill: The depth of the backfill. Measured from the surface of the base subgrade.

Slope Backfill: The slope of the backfill surface.

Concrete

Unit Weight: The unit weight of the retaining wall concrete.

Elastic Modulus: The elastic modulus of the concrete.

Sliding Friction Angle: The angle of friction between the retaining wall and the concrete

Backfill

Friction Angle: The angle of internal friction of the backfill soil.

Dry Unit Weight: The dry unit weight of the backfill soil.

System

Length of Wall: The total length of the wall.

Reinforcement Tab

Reinforcement List

Displays a list of all available reinforcement types supported by the retaining wall analysis. These include US Customary, Soft Metric, and Canadian. Currently the retaining wall analysis only supports rebar.

Reinforcement Type

Separate input pages are available, one for the flexural steel, and one for the shrinkage and temperature steel. Both pages are identical in the input available to the user.

Auto Design Reinforcement

The selection of this option will tell the program to automatically design the rebar size spacing pairs for the given reinforcement. It will automatically set the cover of the flexural steel to 3 inches.

Reinforcement Parameters

Cover: The cover of the reinforcement for the selected area.

Bar Size: A drop down box of available bar sizes.

Bar Spacing: The spacing of the bars.

Surcharge Tab

New: Expands the input to allow the definition of a new surcharge load.

Edit: Expands the input to allow for editing of the currently selected surcharge load in the list.

Delete: Deletes the currently selected surcharge load.

New Surcharge

The interface for the input of a new surcharge load. These loads are assumed to be uniform loads.

Load Type: A drop down box for selecting the type of load. Either ES (a permanent earth surcharge load) or LS (a transient live load).

Load Magnitude: The magnitude of the surcharge load. Assumes positive is downward.

Edit Surcharge

An interface for editing the selected surcharge.

Visualization Tab

Provides a sketch of the retaining wall. This sketch will be automatically updated as you change the dimensions.

Report Tab

Provides a text report of the summary inputs and the results. To print the report press Ctrl+P.

Summary and Navigation Pane

Provides as a summary of the design (green pass and red fail) and serves as links to jump to the corresponding section in the report.

When the Visualization tab is active, the summary pane contains an additional box at the bottom to allow the user to turn on and off various parts of the sketch.