A tieback is a structural element installed in soil or rock to transfer applied tensile load into the ground. Typically in the form of a horizontal wire or rod, or a helical anchor, a tieback is commonly used along with other retaining systems (e.g. soldier piles, sheet piles, secant and tangent walls) to provide additional stability to cantilevered retaining walls.With one end of the tieback secured to the wall, the other end is anchored to a stable structure, such as a concrete deadman which has been driven into the ground or anchored into earth with sufficient resistance. The tieback-deadman structure resists forces that would otherwise cause the wall to lean, as for example, when a seawall is pushed seaward by water trapped on the landward side after a heavy rain.

The main purpose of an anchored wall system is to construct an internally stable mass of soil to resist external failure modes, while maintaining an acceptable level of serviceability. The constructed system should limit movement of the soil and the wall. The magnitude of total anchor force required in the tieback can be determined by analyzing the soil and groundwater properties as well as sources of external loads applied to the system.^[4]

The bond length of the tieback must extend beyond the potential critical failure surface of the soil. Otherwise the tieback cannot provide resistance to the collapse of the ground mass enclosed within the failure surface.