Analytical solution of Coulomb earth pressure on retaining wall by genetic algorithm

Based on the static limit equilibrium analyses of sliding soil mass on rupture, the range of variable and the model of objective function are built to calculate the Coulomb earth pressure of cohesionless soil and cohesive soil by optimization method, and the genetic evolutionary method is used to carry out an example analytical solution. The results indicate that the genetic algorithm increases the convergence speed, shortens time and has high calculation precision in the process of calculating Coulomb active earth pressure on retaining wall. The numerical results of cohesionless soil active earth pressure on retaining wall about 5 groups from example 1 are very closer to the classical Coulomb solutions; the average error is 1.748 % and the average number of generation is 15. The numerical results of cohesive soil active earth pressure on retaining wall about 8 groups from example 2 also match well with the documents' solutions; the average error is only 0.017 %; and the average number of generation is 17.125. The genetic algorithm is very suitable for solving optimization problem of geotechnical engineering because of its good adaptability and strong search performance.