Retaining Wall Design-Equilv Soil Lateral Load

[EIT9667]

I am designing a cantilever retaining wall using an equivalent soil lateral load of 35 psf per ft depth (instead of finding active earth pressure using coulombs method) Should equivalent soil lateral load be in lb/ft per foot depth to design? I'm not sure if i need to convert this or if the soil lateral load was given to me with the wrong units?

 

[SlideRuleEra]

The units of the "Equivalent Liquid Pressure" are pounds per square foot. Also, in your example, 35 lb/ft^2 is a reasonable, typical equivalent liquid pressure for many soils.
See the first few pages of "US Steel Sheet Piling Design Extracts", which can be downloaded (free .pdf) from this page of my website:

http://www.slideruleera.net/Steel-Piling.html

http://www.SlideRuleEra.net

http://www.VacuumTubeEra.net

 

[hokie66]

If you are using this simplified method of equivalent hydrostatic pressure, the 35 psf/ft, or in other words, 35 pcf, is in the right units, as water is in the same units, 62.4 pcf. Be aware that if you go below the water table, you must also include the water pressure.