Interactive remote computations for retaining wall design and risk assessment

Remote computation as well as remote design is a hot topic nowadays and becoming popular and also more diversified in use in the recent years. This study applies the retaining wall design as an example to construct a mechanism for complicated computation in civil engineering directly in a network server for risk assessment, so that a user can easily carry out the computation analysis with any available device via internet by using a personal computer or mobile device. To develop a convenient as well as time-saving operating environment for the remote analysis, an effective interactive interface is also developed. In the retaining wall design, this study provides users with the Rankine method, Coulomb method, and theory of plasticity to perform the objective analysis. The automatic checking system of the program will validate the computation results, under this circumstance, users need not worry about whether their input data and calculated results are consistent with practical standards and regulations or not. Various factors of safety, for risk assessment, resulting from the three kinds of computational methods are compared to verify whether there is any significant difference among them while designing a safe retaining wall overall. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013