Lower-bound approach for seismic passive earth resistance

Current practice for computing earth pressure on earthretaining structures in the presence of seismic action relies on an extension of the Coulomb solution, due to Okabe and Mononobe & Matsuo, and referred to in the literature as the Mononobe–Okabe approach. This paper is intended to contribute to this problem by deriving an analytical solution for passive earth resistance coefficients in the presence of seismic actions, based on the lower-bound theorem of plasticity. The novelty of the present contribution lies in a transformation of axes that allows the problem of seismic passive resistance to be solved using the same stress field equations as the usual static case.