Abstract: Soil nailing wall is a more economical way of retaining and protection and has been widely used in engineering practice; but the design theory is still relatively deficient. This paper analyzes the main problems in the design of soil nailing retaining wall, namely, soil nail forces and displacement calculation; based on practical engineering experiments and considering the affect of the construction process with the incremental method, supposing that the active earth pressure acted on the retaining wall are equal to the sum of the soil nail forces, a simple method for calculating soil nail forces is proposed. Basing on the elastic theory, the formula for calculating the displacement of the soil nailing wall under excavation is put forward. The rationality of the method and formula is checked by engineering case studies.

Key words: soil nailing retaining wall, soil nail forces, displacement of soil nailing wall, incremental calculation method