OPTIMAL DESIGN OF REINFORCED CONCRETE COUNTERFORT RETAINING WALLS

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  Nabeel A. Jasim   |      Falah Majeed Hameed   |   

Mathematical programming techniques have been used to minimize the cost of reinforced concrete counterfort retaining walls. The study presents a formulation based on elastic analysis and the ultimate strength method of design as per ACI-M318code. A computer program is generated to handle the considered problem. The formulation of the optimization problem has been made by utilizing the interior penalty function method as an optimization method with the purpose of minimizing the objective function representing the cost of the one-meter length of the counterfort retaining wall. This includes the cost of concrete, reinforcement, and formwork. The design variables considered in this study are the dimensions and the amounts of reinforcement. It is found that the optimal spacing of counterforts equals about (0.214 to 0.366) of the total height of the wall. The optimum width of the base is found in the range (0.50 to 0.78) of the total height of the wall. Also, the thickness of the stem is in the range(0.0284 to 0.0377) of the total height and it is less than half thickness of the base.