ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION Redistribution Principle Approach for Evaluation of Seismic Active Earth Pressure Behind Retaining Wall A. D. Maskar 1 • S. N. Madhekar 2 • D. R. Phatak 1 Received: 12 March 2016 / Accepted: 27 October 2017 Ó The Institution of Engineers (India) 2017 Abstract The knowledge of seismic active earth pressure behind the rigid retaining wall is very essential in the design of retaining wall in earthquake prone regions. Commonly used Mononobe–Okabe (MO) method consid- ers pseudo-static approach. Recently there are many pseudo-dynamic methods used to evaluate the seismic earth pressure. However, available pseudo-static and pseudo-dynamic methods do not incorporate the effect of wall movement on the earth pressure distribution. Dubrova (Interaction between soils and structures, Rechnoi Trans- port, Moscow, 1963) was the first, who considered such effect and till date, it is used for cohesionless soil, without considering the effect of seismicity. In this paper, Dubro- va’s model based on redistribution principle, considering the seismic effect has been developed. It is further used to compute the distribution of seismic active earth pressure, in a more realistic manner, by considering the effect of wall movement on the earth pressure, as it is displacement based method. The effects of a wide range of parameters like soil friction angle (/), wall friction angle (d), horizontal and vertical seismic acceleration coefficients (k h and k v ); on seismic active earth pressure (K ae ) have been studied. Results are presented for comparison of pseudo-static and pseudo-dynamic methods, to highlight the realistic, non- linearity of seismic active earth pressure distribution. The current study results in the variation of K ae with k h in the same manner as that of MO method and Choudhury and Nimbalkar (Geotech Geol Eng 24(5):1103–1113, 2006) study. To increase in /, there is a reduction in static as well as seismic earth pressure. Also, by keeping constant / value, as k h increases from 0 to 0.3, earth pressure increases; whereas as d increases, active earth pressure decreases. The seismic active earth pressure coefficient (K ae ) obtained from the present study is approximately same as that obtained by previous researchers. Though seismic earth pressure obtained by pseudo-dynamic approach and seismic earth pressure obtained by redistri- bution principle have different background of formulation, the final earth pressure distribution is approximately same. Keywords Seismic active earth pressure  Dubrova’s model  Pseudo-static approach  Pseudo-dynamic method  Redistribution principle  Displacement based method List of Symbols H Height of retaining wall K ae Seismic active earth pressure coefficient k h Seismic acceleration coefficient in horizontal direction k v Seismic acceleration coefficient in vertical direction P ae Seismic active earth pressure d Wall friction angle / Soil friction angle P ae /cH Normalized seismic active earth pressure P a /cH Normalized static active earth pressure z/H Normalized depth F Resultant of normal and frictional force W Inclination of the resultant with the normal W d Weight of the trial wedge & A. D. Maskar amol.maskar5@gmail.com 1 Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, Pune, India 2 Department of Applied Mechanics, College of Engineering, Pune, India 123 J. Inst. Eng. India Ser. A DOI 10.1007/s40030-017-0252-9