The soil arching behind passive retaining walls based on geometrically nonlinear Isogeometric analysis

Abstract

In this paper, we present an effectively numerical approach based on isogeometric analysis (IGA) for geometrically nonlinear analysis of retaining walls. The geometrical nonlinearity is formed in the total lagrange approach: whereas, the material is linear elastic. Deformations are large to use finite deformation theory. The nonlinear equilibrium equations are solved using Newton- Raphson method. IGA utilizes the same basic functions in describing the exact geometry and constructing finite approximation for analysis. The numerical results are verified by checking the weight balance condition and validated by comparing with some published experimental results. The numerical method is a good tool to demonstrate the soil arching behind passive retaining walls.