FUNCTION AND TYPES OF THE VARIOUS RETAINING WALLS

A wall designed to maintain unequal level of ground on its two faces is called a retaining wall.The earth on the side of the wall where ground level is higher is backfill and the retaining wall is to retain for this earth .A retaining wall which supports the load of a bridge and also retains earth is called abutment.The walls placed at an inclination to the normal to the direction of fill and used to retain the ends of an approach fill for a bridge are known as wing walls . Following type of the retaining walls are generally used  (1) Gravity walls (2) Semi-gravity Walls (3) Cantilever walls (4) Counterfort  retaining walls (5) Buttressed walls. The theoretical earth pressure calculated against the face of a retaining wall takes into consideration the pressure exerted by earth and no hydrostatic pressures are considered , however when the backfill is submerged retaining wall is to be designed to resist hydrostatic pressure in addition to pressure exerted by the submerged soil.