Dynamic Lateral Pressures Due to Saturated Backfills on Rigid Walls

Abstract

One‐directional (horizontal) shaking‐table experiments were conducted on one sandy and two cohesive saturated backfills to investigate the dynamic water and total lateral pressures against rigid nonyielding walls during earthquakes. It was found that the dynamic water pressure against the wall is generated due to two different sources. The first source is Westergaard‐type, which is due to the flow of free water in nondeformable backfill soil skeleton and the second is due to the deformability of backfill soil skeleton under undrained conditions. For highly permeable backfill soils, the first source dominates in the generation of pore pressure and the second source dominates for cohesive backfills. The magnitude of the first type of dynamic water pressure is expressed as a function of the parameter