Design of reinforced concrete-steel retaining structures as highway art structure

Retaining structures which built to prevent migration of the slippery grounds, build the basement walls of the underground parts of the building, perform edge footwork on bridges and to protect the ports from water and other factors, are constructions built in sloping areas. Nowadays, As a result of the terraces of the slope land, art structures in highway projects have become important. Concrete weight retaining structures and sheet piles are used to prevent soil excursions in deep excavations and ensure ground stability of coastal highways. Today, retaining walls are being destroyed due to the both inadequacy of the retaining wall analysis programs and the mistakes caused from practice. Due to the fact that our country is located on the earthquake zone, the dynamic effects of the earthquake have come to light again. Dynamic forces in additions to static forces also influence the retaining structures in case of earthquakes especially. This situation revealed the importance of the design of the structures. In this study, five different retaining wall types were investigated according to earthquake and earthquake-free situations. These are sheet pile, concrete weight type retaining wall, reinforced concrete retaining wall, reinforced concrete retaining wall with mitigation console and split reinforced concrete retaining wall. Rankine and Coulomb methods were used to calculate lateral ground forces. Certain forces such as earthquake, surcharge load, water forces and friction force were applied to retaining walls. Thus, the effect of the depression on the different retaining walls has been established and amount of increase of the foundation width was found in the case of earthquake. The effect of water on retaining walls also examined in this study. It has been investigated how much the water strength causes the increase in the size of the retaining walls. The design of the retaining structures has benefited from analysis programs such as Idecad, Sap 2000 and Prota Details. The results of this study show which type of retaining wall is more suitable through the obtained values.