AbstractThe active earth pressure of circular excavation is expected to be smaller than the plane strain active earth pressures. Using the plane strain active earth pressure coefficients in design is obviously a conservative approach. In this paper, an analytical solution is developed to determine the active earth pressure on inclined rough circular walls with sloping ground surface based on the results of slip line method. Two types of failure profiles are assumed for the slip lines behind the circular wall. The active earth pressures are then obtained by solving the differential equation in the direction of slip lines. The analytical solutions are compared with the results using the numerical formulation by Cheng et al. (Int. J. Geomech. 2007; 7(1):1–15). It is found that the difference between the analytical solution and the numerical solution is small when the inclination of the ground surface and the wall friction angle are small. Finally, design tables of the active earth pressure coefficients for vertical circular retaining walls with various angles of ground surface and wall friction angle are presented. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.