A cantilever reinforced-concrete retaining wall case study for a highway cut — worked Rankine active earth pressure with traffic surcharge, overturning/sliding/bearing stability checks, a shear key fix for a failed sliding check, and stem and footing reinforcement design.
The project brief: a highway widening project needs a cantilever retaining wall holding back a 12 ft cut behind a new shoulder, with granular backfill and AASHTO traffic surcharge from the adjacent travel lane. Framed as this program's clearest geotechnical-to-structural handoff, every stability check and reinforcement calculation in this module traces back to a single Rankine active pressure calculation.
This module walks the whole design the way a practicing structural engineer would: the active pressure and surcharge calculation, the overturning and sliding stability checks (including what happens when sliding fails on friction alone and a shear key is added to fix it), the bearing pressure check, and the ACI 318 reinforcement design for both the stem and the footing's heel and toe. The full worked numbers, complete bill of materials, and finished design reasoning are part of the unlocked module below.