ABSTRACT
One of the most significant components of performance-based methods in the seismic design of retaining walls is the accurate estimation of the anticipated permanent displacement. Little attention has been paid to predict the seismic permanent displacement of a cantilever-type retaining wall. Finite element method is used in the current study to predict the seismic permanent displacement of a cantilever retaining wall considering many realistic aspects associated with the real seismic behaviour of the wall-soil system. This study mainly focuses on the evaluation of the effect of the earthquake characteristics and seismic earth pressure on the seismic permanent displacement. The results show that the Newmark sliding block method overestimates the seismic permanent displacement. The most critical scenario, causing maximum permanent displacement, is the one when the ground motion having maximum amplitude but a minimum frequency content. The seismic earth pressure has a low impact on the permanent displacement.
