Document: NUREG-0800
Document ID: 072325a8-02ea-4d59-bb3f-06592c340804
Document Type: srp
Title: The Aluminum Association, Specification for Aluminum Structures
Source: NUREG-0800
Source URL: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0520/ML052070327.pdf
Revision Date: 2023-06
Chapter: 3
Section ID: 3.4
CFR Part: 
CFR Title: 

Content:
failure and the maximum soil shear strength is mobilized along the potential sliding surface, which passes through the toe of the wall. (3) The soil wedge behind the wall acts as a rigid body so that seismic accelerations may be considered uniform throughout the mass. Seed and Whitman (1970) stated that Mononobe and Okabe apparently assumed that the total pressure computed by their analytical approach would act on the wall at the same position as the DRAFT Rev. 2 - April 1996 3.8.4-52 initial static pressure, that is, at one-third the height of the wall above the base. Other researchers, however, subsequently found that this assumption was not correct and that the dynamic lateral force increment acted at about the middle height of the wall (EERL 73-05 and Whitman 1970). In view of the complex nature of the M-O equation that gives the total dynamic lateral pressure, Seed and Whitman also proposed a simplification of the M-O method to calculate the dynamic active lateral force increment. Seed and Whitman (1970) cited the work by Kapila, in 1962, on the determination of both active and passive lateral pressures by the M-O method, utilizing graphical construction. While the M-O method was developed for yielding retaining walls, Wood (EERL 73-05) and Seed and Whitman (1970) found a solution for nonyielding walls, using elastic theory and assuming that material properties are constant with depth. Wood's solution predicted that the dynamic lateral force increment would act at about 0.63 times the height of the wall, which corresponded approximately to a parabolic distribution of earth pressure unlike M-O's inverted triangular distribution. Wood's theoretical work was corroborated by experimental shake table tests conducted by others who found that the measured lateral pressures on nonyielding walls exceeded those predicted by the M-O method by a factor of 2 to 3 (Whitman 1990). Finite element analyses in which the soil modulus increased with depth resulted in 5 percent to