• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.5-10
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• 2019

In recent Gyeongju and Pohang earthquakes, motions that exceed the design ground motion were recorded. This has led to adjustments to the design earthquake intensity in selected design guidelines. An increment in the design intensity requires reevaluation of all associated facilities, requiring extensive time and cost. Firstly, the seismic factor of safety of built concrete retaining walls are calculated. Secondly, the seismic margin of concrete retaining walls is evaluated. The design sections of concrete walls built at power plants and available site investigation reports are utilized. Widely used pseudo-static analysis method is used to evaluate the seismic performance. It is shown that all concrete walls are safe against the adjusted design ground motion. To determine the seismic margin of concrete walls, the critical accelerations, which is defined as the acceleration that causes the seismic factor of safety to exceed the allowable value, are calculated. The critical acceleration is calculated as 0.36g~0.8g. The limit accelerations are significantly higher than the design intensity and are demonstrated to have sufficient seismic margin. Therefore, it is concluded that the concrete retaining walls do not need to be reevaluated even if the design demand is increased up to 0.3g.