Investigation of optimal designs for concrete cantilever retaining walls in different soils

In this paper, the investigation of the optimum designs for two types of concrete cantilever retaining walls was conducted utilizing the artificial bee colony algorithm. Stability conditions like safety factors of sliding, overturning and bearing capacity and some geometric instances due to inherent of the wall were considered as the design constraints. The effect of the existence of the key in wall design on the objective function was probed for changeable properties of foundation and backfill soils. In optimization analysis, the concrete of the wall, which directly affects parameters such as carbon dioxide emission and the cost, was considered as the objective function and analyzes were performed according to different discrete design variables. The optimum concrete cantilever retaining wall designs satisfying constraints of stability conditions and geometric instances were obtained for different soil cases. Optimum designs of concrete cantilever retaining wall with the key were attained in some soil cases which were not found the feasible optimum solution of the concrete cantilever retaining wall. Results illustrate that the artificial bee colony algorithm was a favorable metaheuristic optimization method to gain optimum designs of concrete cantilever retaining wall.