Determination of ultimate load and possible failure path for a rigid strip footing on soil partially supported by retaining wall using an adaptive refinement process

In most branches of soil mechanics and foundation engineering, approximate methods are often used for computing the ultimate load of a footing and slop stability analysis. There are different types of approximate methods. Such as slip-line method, limit equilibrium and limit analysis. Each of the mentioned methods has restrictions in the displacement computing values, failure path, simultaneously satisfying equilibrium equations, fundamental relationships and compatibility equations, and access to the real failure mechanism. Finite element method can be used to overcome some of these restrictions. But finite element method itself has weaknesses. Some of these weaknesses are lack of awareness of suitable element sizes, lack of awareness of error value in analysis process, lack of accurate information about failure path development and costly access to failure mechanism path occurrence. Here, the adaptive refinement based on the rule of gradient recovery and concept of norm was presented as a powerful method for overcoming the restrictions of the general finite element method. This paper also tries to find an access to both the propagation of failure path and the ultimate load value for a rigid strip footing on soil partially supported by a retaining wall.