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Le comportement géomécanique des ouvrages géotechniques à l’exemple des rideaux de palplanches est entaché d’incertitudes épistémiques liées aux hypothèses régissant le modèle géomécanique de calcul, mais aussi d’incertitudes aléatoires liées à la variabilité spatiale du sol. L’objectif principal de cette thèse est de mieux appréhender l’effet de ces incertitudes sur le comportement d’un rideau de palplanches. Pour cela le présent mémoire s’articule autour de quatre points principaux : Le premier point est relatif d’une part à l’analyse des hypothèses utilisées pour la modélisation géomécanique d’un rideau de palplanches et d’autre part à l’extension de la méthode des coefficients de réaction d’un système unidimensionnel basé sur une poutre et des appuis élastoplastiques à un système bidimensionnel de plaque orthotrope sur le même type d’appuis (MISS-CR-PLQ). Le deuxième point concerne la modélisation de la variabilité spatiale du sol. Après une comparaison entre deux méthodes de génération de champs aléatoires nous avons retenu la méthode Circulant Embedding pour son efficience. Plusieurs études paramétriques ont été menées pour analyser les effets des hypothèses prises lors de la génération des champs aléatoires. Le troisième point concerne la mise en place d’une démarche mécano-fiabiliste permettant d’intégrer la variabilité spatiale du sol pour le cas des rideaux de palplanches. Le quatrième point est consacré à l’application de la démarche développée pour un cas d’étude à travers des analyses probabilistes et fiabilistes. L’influence des paramètres statistiques (e.g. les longueurs de corrélations, la corrélation croisée, …), mécanique et géométrique a été étudiée. / The geomechanical behaviour of geotechnical structures such as sheet pile walls is subjected to epistemic uncertainties due to geomechanical models’ assumptions and also the aleatory uncertainties which could be related to the soil spatial variability. The main objective of this thesis is to gain more insight into the effect of these uncertainties on the sheet pile behaviour. To this end, this thesis focuses on four main issues: The first one is related on the one hand to the analysis of the used geomechanical hypotheses for modelling of retaining walls. On the other hand, to extend the one-dimensional subgrade reaction method which is based on a beam relying on elastoplastic supports to a two-dimensional system that call to an orthotropic plate relying on the same supports (MISS-CR-PLQ). The second issue concerns the soil spatial variability modelling. After a key comparison between two random field generation methods, we selected the Circulating Embedding method for its efficiency. Several parametric studies have been conducted to analyse the effects of different assumptions of random field generation. The third issue is related to the implementation of the proposed mechanical-reliability approach taking into account the soil spatial variability. The last issue is devoted to the application of the developed approach to a case study through probabilistic and reliability analyses. The influence of statistical parameters (e.g. correlation lengths, cross-correlation,...), mechanical and geometrical has been examined.

Design of retaining structures depends upon the load which is transferred from backfill soil as well as external loads and also the resisting capacity of the structure. The traditional safety factor approach of the design of retaining structures does not address the variability of soils and loads. The properties of backfill soil are inherently variable and influence the design decisions considerably. A rational procedure for the design of retaining structures needs to explicitly consider variability, as they may cause significant changes in the performance and stability assessment. Reliability based design enables identification and separation of different variabilities in loading and resistance and recommends reliability indices to ensure the margin of safety based on probability theory. Detailed studies in this area are limited and the work presented in the dissertation on the Optimum design of retaining structures under static and seismic conditions: A reliability based approach is an attempt in this direction. This thesis contains ten chapters including Chapter 1 which provides a general introduction regarding the contents of the thesis and Chapter 2 presents a detailed review of literature regarding static and seismic design of retaining structures and highlights the importance of consideration of variability in the optimum design and leads to scope of the investigation. Targeted stability is formulated as optimization problem in the framework of target reliability based design optimization (TRBDO) and presented in Chapter 3. In Chapter 4, TRBDO approach for cantilever sheet pile walls and anchored cantilever sheet pile walls penetrating sandy and clayey soils is developed. Design penetration depth and section modulus for the various anchor pulls are obtained considering the failure criteria (rotational, sliding, and flexural failure modes) as well as variability in the back fill soil properties, soil-steel pile interface friction angle, depth of the water table, total depth of embedment, yield strength of steel, section modulus of sheet pile and anchor pull. The stability of reinforced concrete gravity, cantilever and L-shaped retaining walls in static conditions is examined in the context of reliability based design optimization and results are presented in Chapter 5 considering failure modes viz. overturning, sliding, eccentricity, bearing, shear and moment failures in the base slab and stem of wall. Optimum wall proportions are proposed for different coefficients of variation of friction angle of the backfill soil and cohesion of the foundation soil corresponding to different values of component as well as lower bounds of system reliability indices. Chapter 6 presents an approach to obtain seismic passive resistance behind gravity walls using composite curved rupture surface considering limit equilibrium method of analysis with the pseudo-dynamic approach. The study is extended to obtain the rotational and sliding displacements of gravity retaining walls under passive condition when subjected to sinusoidal nature of earthquake loading. Chapter 7 focuses on the reliability based design of gravity retaining wall when subjected to passive condition during earthquakes. Reliability analysis is performed for two modes of failure namely rotation of the wall about its heel and sliding of the wall on its base are considering variabilities associated with characteristics of earthquake ground motions, geometric proportions of wall, backfill soil and foundation soil properties. The studies reported in Chapter 8 and Chapter 9 present a method to evaluate reliability for external as well as internal stability of reinforced soil structures (RSS) using reliability based design optimization in the framework of pseudo static and pseudo dynamic methods respectively. The optimum length of reinforcement needed to maintain the stability against four modes of failure (sliding, overturning, eccentricity and bearing) by taking into account the variabilities associated with the properties of reinforced backfill, retained backfill, foundation soil, tensile strength and length of the geosynthetic reinforcement by targeting various component and system reliability indices is computed. Finally, Chapter 10 contains the important conclusions, along with scope for further work in the area. It is hoped that the methodology and conclusions presented in this study will be beneficial to the geotechnical engineering community in particular and society as a whole.