2nd Croatian Conference on Earthquake Engineering 2CroCEE

Retaining structures in R. of North Macedonia are designed according to the concept of global safety factors, with the conventional methods of limit equilibrium. This method was widely used in ex-YU countries until Eurocodes have been published аs regulations in the country formal legislation, where there are prescribed different design approaches, with specific partial coefficients for actions, materials, and/or resistances. For the seismic analysis of the walls, “Rulebook on technical norms for design and calculation of engineering structures in seismically active areas” (1987) is used. In this paper a comparison between the mentioned methods and regulations is made, in terms of the different approaches for the stability verification, as well as the required minimum width of the foundation for satisfying the stability criteria for 5 different heights of the walls, i.e. 3m, 4.5m, 6.0m, 7.5m and 9.0m. Furthermore, as our region is seismically active, special consideration is given to the parameters in seismic analysis procedure. It is shown that in order to satisfy the stability criteria, there is a need to increase the dimensions of the walls in relation to the dimensions obtained by the static analysis. The obtained results show significant differences between the regulations, especially when the seismic action is taken into account.