Essay On Retaining Walls

Faculty of Engineering

Cairo University

Irrigation Design Works

Term Paper

Different methods of slope stability and retaining walls

Submitted by: Ibraheem Mohammad Saeed

ID: 1122331

Submitted to: Dr. Mostafa Ahmad Ghaith

A retaining wall is a type of structures that is needed when -usually- soil needs to be held back. This doesn’t allow the soil to erode or slide. The design of a retaining wall depends mainly on the pressure produced by the material it retains.

There are several types of retaining walls:

1) Gravity walls

a) Reinforced gravity wall:

i) Concrete cantilever ii) Counter-fort/Buttressed iii) Precast concrete

2) Brick

3) Stone

4) Reinforced soil walls

a) Reinforced Soil

b) Soil Nailing

5) Hybrid system

a) Anchored Earth

b) Tailed Gabion

c) Tailed Concrete Block

d) Miscellaneous

1) Gravity Retaining Walls:

This type of retaining walls depends on its massive weight to hold and retain the

There are several types of reinforced gravity walls such as:

i) Concrete cantilever gravity wall:

A wall that is connected to its foundation is called a cantilever wall. It is important to design this structure very carefully since it with holds a lot of soil. This type of wall lies on a slab foundation, which is in turn, loaded by the weight of the soil behind it along with the surcharge to prevent the wall from overturning and sliding. ii) Counter-fort/Buttressed retaining wall:

A counter-fort wall is a type of cantilever wall strengthened with counter-forts formed of the same the same block of stone as the back of the wall and base slabs. The counter-forts reduce bending and shearing stresses and are considered tension stiffeners. Counter-forts are most used in extra high walls of about 8 to 12 m to reduce bending moments. iii) Precast concrete gravity