huangyhg

how do you design concrete wall?
this may be a dumb question, but i'm wondering how you would design a concrete cantilever retaining wall (i.e. size the steel and the width). the wall is 12' high and about 25' long. do i just take 1 foot sections and model them like beam-columns? thanks in advance.
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yes, the easiest way to do it is model the wall as 1 foot wide beam-columns. the vertical force (from beam above or floor it is supporting) will probably have much less effect on the size of the wall than the horizontal soil or water pressure force. if the top of the wall isn't supporting anything, i wouldn't even take into account the weight of the wall as a vertical force, and just make sure the design for water / soil pressure isn't the bare minimum. using beam tables from a steel manual or textbook (or homemade tables, yeah right), you can come up with the moment, shear, and deflection in the wall. i should add as a clarification, the 1 foot widths are vertical not horizontal. (if the wall was taller than it was wide, maybe you would use imaginary horizontal widths)
the crsi handbook describes the design of retaining walls. it also has "ready-made" tables, but they are somewhat limited in terms of application.
it sounds like you don't have software available. you might try downloading a free demo version of design softare, to compare results. enercalc.com has a design package which includes retaining wall design. its demo is nearly full-featured, and free.
here is another example of a "prescriptive retaining wall design"
most 'dot's' have standard plates for retaining walls. go to your local dot site and poke around.
dicksewerrat...i'm not familiar with dot sites...could you lead me in the right direction?
i went through the caltrans site and was unable to find retaining wall design example; however, i found a few pdfs related to retaining wall design from the city of los angeles site. hopefully this is a good starting point.

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