How To Calculate Volume Of Concrete Retaining Wall

After reading this article you will know how to calculate a volume of the concrete retaining wall. It’s quite easy, just follow instructions and watch the video tutorial.

A retaining wall is a structure designed and constructed to resist the lateral pressure of soil, when there is a desired change in ground elevation that exceeds the angle of repose of the soil.

A basement wall is thus one kind of retaining wall. But the term usually refers to a cantilever retaining wall, which is a freestanding structure without lateral support at its top.These are cantilevered from a footing and rise above the grade on one side to retain a higher level grade on the opposite side. The walls must resist the lateral pressures generated by loose soils.

In the example provided in the video the retaining wall is built upon a base slab and is also known as stem.

The stem and base are the primary parts of a cantilever type of retaining wall. The toe belongs to the front portion and heel belongs to the back portion. The stem is supported at the base and the wall tapers around the top.

The length of the base remains among 0.4 to 0.7 times the height of the wall. Toe to base proportion should be 1:4. The thickness of the base slab is supposed to be little higher with regard to the depth of the stem at the bottom. The lowest thickness of the stem should have been 200mm for construction purposes.

The components of a retaining wall range from base slab footing, shear key, stem, construction joint.

The dimensions of the retaining wall in the video are:

Length of the front is 20 m
Length of one side is 2 mm
Thickness is 200 mm
The height of the wall or stem constructed on the base is 5m
The width of the lower part of the wall is 500 mm
The width of the upper part of the wall is 200 mm

The base slab is represented as A and the wall is represented as B.
The following formula is used to calculate the volume of retaining wall :-
Volume of A + Volume of B
Volume of A = Length x Breadth x Height = 20 x 2 x 0.2 (after converting 200 millimeter to meter) = 8m3

To learn how to find out the volume of B, watch the following video tutorial.

Video Source: L & T – Learning Technology

How to calculate volume of concrete retaining wall