ORIGINAL PAPER Seismic Behaviour of Retaining Structures, Design Issues and Requalification Techniques Deepankar Choudhury • Amey D. Katdare • Sanjay K. Shukla • B. Munwar Basha • Priyanka Ghosh Received: 16 July 2013 / Accepted: 11 January 2014 Ó Indian Geotechnical Society 2014 Abstract The realistic estimation of seismic earth pres- sure is very crucial for the design of retaining structures in seismic-prone areas. Several researchers have developed analytical and numerical methods for the estimation of seismic earth pressure. Some experimental studies are also reported to clearly present the seismic behaviour of retaining structures. Pseudo-static and pseudo-dynamic methods are the ones which are popularly used for the calculation of seismic earth pressure. Pseudo-dynamic method is a modification of the conventional pseudo-static method by eliminating most of the limitations. Recently, the researchers have shown that the new dynamic method considering Rayleigh wave, which plays a major role in the calculation of seismic earth pressures to maintain com- patible dynamic stress boundary conditions, is better than pseudo-dynamic method as validated through the available dynamic centrifuge test results. This state-of-the-art paper presents a critical review of the literature on the available procedures for the seismic analysis, design and requalifi- cation of retaining structures. The methods which are currently used in routine practice for the seismic design of retaining structures are also explained briefly. Indian and some other international design codes for the seismic design of retaining structures are explained. For new design and requalification of existing retaining structures in seis- mic-prone areas, a worked out example is provided with recommendations for techniques of requalification. Keywords Seismic analysis  Pseudo-static analysis  Pseudo-dynamic analysis  Retaining structures  Design codes Introduction Many researchers have developed several methods for analysis and design of retaining structures in the seismic- prone areas. Pseudo-static and pseudo-dynamic methods are most popularly used analytical methods in Geotech- nical Engineering practice. Various researchers worked to estimate the static earth pressures on retaining walls and to observe their behaviour [28]. Mononobe and Matsuo [47] and Okabe [54] explained for the first time the application of pseudo-static approach for the estimation of dynamic/seismic active and passive earth pressures on rigid retaining walls. Terzaghi [78] (see Kramer [43]) D. Choudhury (&)  A. D. Katdare Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), Powai, Mumbai 400076, India e-mail: dc@civil.iitb.ac.in A. D. Katdare e-mail: ameykatdare@iitb.ac.in D. Choudhury Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), New Delhi, India S. K. Shukla Discipline of Civil Engineering, School of Engineering, Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA, Australia e-mail: s.shukla@ecu.edu.au B. M. Basha Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Ordnance Factory Campus, Yeddumailaram 502205, India e-mail: basha@iith.ac.in P. Ghosh Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India e-mail: priyog@iitk.ac.in 123 Indian Geotech J DOI 10.1007/s40098-014-0100-z