IMPROVING THE PERFORMANCE OF SIMPLY SUPPORTED RC RETAINING WALLS USING EXTENDED POLYSTYRENE PANELS

In the recent years, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia started some huge projects in the field of infrastructure development through all the Kingdom regions. With the urban development, the growth of the roads, bridges and tunnels increased. Consequently, the construction of retaining walls for highways, building basements and water tanks has increased. Expanded Polystryene (EPS) has been extensively used in several applications of civil engineering in recent years due to its compressibility and light weight features. Applications such as multi-story underground structures, bridges, highways, pipelines, ground tanks .This study investigates how to minimize the lateral earth pressure acting on simply supported RC retaining walls, by using an inclusion panel of EPS, produced in Saudi Arabia, with different thicknesses. It is noticed that using an EPS inclusion between simply supported retaining walls and soil can minimize the acting lateral earth pressure up to 50%.