Abstract: Taking the cross-section area of a gravity retaining wall as the objective function,and considering the stability of anti-sliding and anti-overturning, ground base stress, related construction requirement as restraint conditions, the mathematical model was established. Based on the patternsearch tool of Matlab, the section of the retaining wall was optimized, on the basis of verifying the result, by comparing the result with the existing literature, it showed that the optimization capability of pattern search algorithm was great, the optimization for the section of the retaining wall was realized, the effect was significant, so it can be widely applied in engineering.