Stone retaining wall is constructed to resist the lateral earth pressure. Its characteristic is regarded as a discontinuous medium

whereas the characteristic of the soil behind the wall is a typical continuous medium. In this paper

the ultimate bearing capacity of masonry retaining wall was studied by combining the lower bound theory

the mixed numerical discretisation and linear programming. Firstly

soil mass was discretised by triangular finite elements to simulate its continuum mechanics characteristics

while the masonry wall was discretised by rigid block elements to simulate its non-continuum mechanics characteristics. Thus

constraint conditions of the statically admissible stress field were both proposed for soil and the masonry retaining wall. Meanwhile

constraint conditions were also proposed for interfaces between finite elements and block elements. By considering the overload coefficient as the objective function

the linear programming model was established for calculating the ultimate bearing capacity of masonry retaining wall. In addition

the interior point algorithm was employed to solve the problems of linear mathematical programming. At last

the ultimate load (or safety factor) of slope and its corresponding stress field were obtained directly. Moreover

three typical examples were conducted to validate the proposed method. Therefore

this study successfully introduced the mixed numerical discretisation into the limit analysis.