LateralK

LateralK is a tool specialized in calculating the lateral earth pressure coefficients in both static as well as earthquake conditions. The coefficient is defined as the ratio between the effective stress to the vertical effective stress and enables engineers and architects to learn the overall behavior and strength of the soil. To be more precise, they can determine the adequate consolidation for various structures such as basements, deep foundations, tunnels, retaining walls and braced excavations.

The program enables you to determine the earth pressure active, passive and at-rest coefficients using either the Coulomb or Rankin method. Consequentially, you can calculate the effect of the wall-water friction, the wall batter angle and the backslope when creating the sketch for your construction project. In fact, the application enables you to save the forces along with the point of application of forces in an image format that you can add to the geotechnical report of the project.

As far as the lateral pressure coefficient for seismic conditions are concerned, they are obtained using the Mononobe-Okabe method for different vertical and horizontal components of the ground acceleration. Moreover, you can get detailed values of the Kpe and Kae coefficients for every 0.05g steps of av and ah, calculate the total seismic force and the seismic surcharge load for the retaining walls.