Computation of seismic translational and rotational displacements of cantilever retaining wall with shear key

This study proposes a displacement based design methodology for cantilever retaining walls with shear key to enhance its performance under seismic loading. Two-dimensional, plane strain finite element dynamic analyses of cantilever retaining wall with different locations of shear key have been performed in OpenSees, which is validated through case studies. Deformation modes and failure mechanism are studied in detail and the model with shear key at heel is proposed as the suitable configuration. The existing double wedge model has been updated to analytically compute seismic sliding displacements of cantilever retaining wall with shear key. A total of 64 cases of analysis have been performed by varying height and toe–widths of wall and subjecting it to four different earthquakes, each scaled to 0.12 g, 0.24 g, 0.36 g and 0.6 g. Suitable design factors have been proposed to estimate peak rotational displacements, residual rotational displacements and peak sliding displacements by comparing the results from FEM analysis and double wedge model.