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Sheet pile walls are used to support moderate height of excavation. If bracing system or anchors are not provided, it gets stability mainly from passive earth resistance below the dredge line. Non-availability of large open space in metro cities gives the perception to engineers to go deeper in the earth and use sheet pile walls for supporting various types of works like parking space and housing utilities. To avoid the damage to surrounding structure, proper analysis of settlement and deflection of the wall should be carried out. The deflection and settlement of wall depend on soil properties, depth of excavation and wall properties. In the present study, cantilever sheet pile walls are analyzed under surcharge loading for settlement and deflection through pseudo-static approach using finite difference-based program FLAC2D. A parametric study is carried out assuming an elastic–perfectly plastic Mohr–Coulomb model with non-associated flow rule by varying the seismic coefficients, embedded depth, soil–wall friction angle, type of soil, magnitude of surcharge and distance from the top of the wall. The results show that by increasing the coefficient of horizontal seismic acceleration, the deflection and settlement of cantilever sheet pile walls increase. It is also observed that with an increase in distance of surcharge from top of the wall, both settlement and deflection decrease.

In this study, a solution is derived in the framework of the limit equilibrium approach for the design of cantilever sheet pile walls under both static and seismic conditions in cohesionless soil with uniform surcharge load located at the top of the wall. The proposed method satisfies the horizontal force equilibrium and moment equilibrium about toe simultaneously. From the results of the study, it is highlighted that the application of surcharge load increases the magnitude of bending moment along the depth of the sheet pile wall and deflection at the top of the wall. Further, the increase in plastic zone due to mobilisation of earth pressure is also observed. A parametric study is done by varying the soil–wall friction angle and magnitude of uniform surcharge load acting on the backfill of the cantilever sheet pile walls. From the results, it is observed that as the soil–wall friction angle increases, the maximum bending moment, deflection, depth of plastic zone and settlement adjacent to sheet pile wall decrease. Further, the increase in the magnitude of uniform surcharge increases the maximum bending moment, deflection, depth of plastic zone and settlement adjacent to sheet pile wall.