Effect of water table on the behaviour of retaining walls and adjacent structures during earthquake loading

In the context of container ports, the water table is typically lower than the ground surface of the backfill, allowing container cranes to load or unload freight from ships. Although previous studies of the seismic behaviour of retaining walls embedded in saturated soils have been performed, the same water table and ground surface are adopted for simplicity. Moreover, limited research has been conducted considering the influence of existing structures, i.e. container cranes in a more specific sense, on retaining wall systems subjected to seismic loading. In this research, a series of dynamic centrifuge tests were performed on the same retaining wall system with the same structure on the backfill, but with different water tables to investigate the effect of water tables on the dynamic behaviour of retaining walls and adjacent container cranes. This paper presents the dynamic response of soil and retaining walls in terms of accelerations, displacements, and deformations. The behaviour of the structure on the backfill is also presented. Very interestingly, it is found that the lowered water table caused changes in the failure mechanism of this retaining wall system. • The effect of water tables on the dynamic behaviour of structure-soil-wall systems is investigated via centrifuge modelling. • The failure modes of the retaining wall systems can be changed due to changes in water tables. • Lowered water tables can increase the probability of shear failure in the soil and structural collapse.