The study is devoted to both static and earthquake response analysis of retaining structures acted upon by lateral earth pressure. Two main approaches were implemented in the analysis, namely, the Mononobe-Okabe analytical method and the numerical Finite element procedure as provided in the ready software ABAQUS with explicit dynamic method. A basic case study considered in the present work is the bridge approach retaining walls as a part of AL-Jadiriya bridge intersection to obtain the effects of the backfill and the ground water on the retaining wall response including displacement of the retaining structure in addition to the behavior of the fill material. Parametric studies were carried out to evaluate the effects of several factors

This paper presents the results of experimental investigations to predict the bearing capacity of square footing on geogrid-reinforced loose sand by performing model tests. The effects of several parameters were studied in order to study the general behavior of improving the soil by using the geogrid. These parameters include the eccentricity value, depth of first layer of reinforcement, and vertical spacing of reinforcement layers. The results of the experimental work indicated that there was an optimum reinforcement embedment depth at which the bearing capacity was the highest when single-layer reinforcement was used. The increase of (z/B) (vertical spacing of reinforcement layer/width of footing) above 1.5 has no effect on the re