Assessment of seismic amplification factor of excavation with support system

Retaining walls have been used in many construction projects such as for road and inclined surfaces protection. The damage caused by an earthquake depends on the fundamental frequency, amplitude and the duration of the seismic motion. These parameters strongly depend on the seismic properties of the layers that are near the surface. In the study of retaining walls, in addition to the influence of soil, the influence of topography is also important. In the present study, site response analysis is performed by using finite element software PLAXIS to obtain the effect of various factors such as embedded length of the sheet pile, underground water table, length and angle of the nail, shear wave velocity of soil on site effect and dynamic response. Moreover, for better understanding of the effect of the above parameters, the stability analysis was performed by using shear reduction method. The results show that an increase in the embedded length of the sheet pile and the length of nailing causes an increase in the amplification factor. Moreover, for shear-wave velocity in the range of 200–600 m/s, the amplification factor increases with increase of the shear-wave velocity due to the decrease of nonlinear behavior.