Simulation–optimization model for the structural design of cantilever retaining walls

As the trend of retaining wall construction in Egypt continues to grow, it becomes necessary to find ways to reduce their construction costs. There are various types of retaining walls such as cantilever, counterfort, buttressed, and tied back walls. All these types have two elements in common; namely, the stem and the base. The cost of a retaining wall depends primarily on its material, and secondarily on excavation and backfill works. In this study, a new model is implemented in MATLAB to create the optimal design of the cantilever retaining wall elements. The design model is coupled with the shuffled complex evolution algorithm, developed at the University of Arizona (SCE-UA). This developed framework is applied to an existing model previously used by other researchers to demonstrate its efficiency and obtain the best economical solution. The results proved that using the SCE-UA method provides superior outcomes compared to those of other algorithms.