Effect of wall height on seismic behavior of cantilever retaining walls

City installations due to nature-human interaction and rapid population growth are one of the biggest triggers of the construction industry and engineering studies. Every engineering structure built serves the purpose of preserving the balance of nature and meeting the needs of people throughout its service life. Retaining walls are special engineering structures that are widely used for different purposes in civil engineering applications. It is of great importance to evaluate the seismic response of retaining walls before design. Because it is known that the interaction mechanism between the retaining wall, backfill and foundation soil can change the seismic behavior of these structures. The primary target of this study is to examine the effects of wall height variation on the dynamic behavior of cantilever retaining walls considering soil-structure interaction. In line with this target stated, dynamic analyses based on the finite element method have been performed considering three different cantilever wall heights, five different subsoil conditions and three different earthquake records. The obtained results showed that the dynamic behavior of the wall can be remarkably affected by factors such as ground motion frequency content, wall height and soil-structure interaction. Accordingly, it can be highlighted that significant differences can be observed in the dynamic behavior of retaining structures subjected to different loads and soil effects for different design purposes.