Evaluation of Wall Inclination Effect on the Dynamic Response of Mechanically Stabilized Earth Walls Using Shaking Table Tests

Evaluation of Wall Inclination Effect on the Dynamic Response of Mechanically Stabilized Earth Walls Using Shaking Table Tests

Tirtha Sathi Bandyopadhyay, Sumit Kumar Nandan, Pradipta Chakrabortty
Copyright: © 2022 |Pages: 21
DOI: 10.4018/IJGEE.310052
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Abstract

Shaking table tests were conducted in this study to determine the effect of facing wall inclinations, and the density of the backfill. Reduced-scale models reinforced with two layers of geogrid and fine sand as backfill were studied to identify the dynamic behaviour of mechanically stabilised earth walls. Five different angles of inclination of the facing walls were considered to study its effect on the responses. All seven models were excited by stepped amplitude sinusoidal base accelerations with incrementally increasing peak ground acceleration amplitudes and constant frequencies. The model wall's responses are compared in terms of the acceleration amplification and lateral displacements of the wall measured at different elevations. These tests revealed that horizontal displacement of the wall was maximum at the middle position of the wall. Minimum displacement was observed in the 20° inclined wall towards the backfill soil, which was 35% lower than the vertical wall. The accelerations were amplified along with the wall height. The wall having 10° inward inclination with dense backfill showed the maximum amplification (for high PGA). In the last part, an analytical study was conducted to calculate the acceleration amplifications and compared them with the experimental results. Higher values were observed in the case of the analytical approach as compared to the experimental study.
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Introduction

Retaining structures are indispensable parts of all highway constructions. The geosynthetic reinforced soil (GRS) wall, also known as mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls has become a popular substitute to the regular concrete retaining walls in many of today's highway and bridge constructions. A mechanically stabilized earth retaining wall is a composite structure consisting of several layers of compacted backfill soil and reinforcements. Reinforcing elements can be geosynthetics, polymeric or steel strips, etc. which are fixed to the wall. The geosynthetic reinforced soil walls have gained a lot of importance worldwide in the last few decades. The growing applications of these walls in resisting seismic ground motions have led to widespread research in this field. Studies show that MSE walls can perform satisfactorily during a severe earthquake (Tatsuoka et al., 1996; Tatsuoka et al., 1997; Pamuk et al., 2004). Tatsuoka et al. (1996) observed base sliding and tilting of the wall for some reinforced soil walls subjected to earthquake loading. Pamuk et al. (2004) found that the seismic shakings were the main sources of damage in the reinforced earth walls. Various researches have been carried out, including full-scale studies (Ling et al., 2005; Bathurst et al., 2009; Yang et al., 2009; Koseki, 2012; Yang et al., 2012; Riccio et al., 2014), reduced-scale model (Murata, 1994; Koseki et al., 1998; Chen et al., 2007; El-Emam and Bathurst, 2007; Huang et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2015; Srilatha et al., 2016; Bandyopadhyay et al., 2021; Nandan et al., 2021) and numerical studies (Bathurst and Hatami, 1998; Ling et al., 2010; Abdelouhab et al., 2011; Liu et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2014). Bathurst et al., (2009) conducted tests on full-scale modular block walls with reinforcements with different stiffness values. The researchers observed that peak wall deformations decreased with the increase in reinforcement stiffness. Koseki (2012) revealed that the geosynthetic-reinforced soil retaining wall performed satisfactorily compared to the unreinforced wall during past large earthquakes. Koseki et al. (1998) performed shaking table tests and observed that the wall’s failure mode was overturning with tilting of the wall face. El-Emam and Bathurst (2007) studied the influence of reinforcement parameters on a small-scale reinforced wall. The researchers concluded that the total facing displacement under base excitation decreased with increased reinforcement length and greater reinforcement layers. Srilatha et al.(2016) conducted shaking table tests by changing the base shaking frequency to study the dynamic behaviour of unreinforced and reinforced soil slopes with clayey sand as backfill. The researchers concluded that reinforced models showed lesser displacement compared to unreinforced in all frequencies. Bathurst and Hatami (1998) conducted numerical investigations to check the effect of reinforcement stiffness, reinforcement length and base boundary conditions on the seismic response of MSE walls using the finite difference method. Researchers reported that wall displacements and reinforcement loads accumulated during base shaking. The wall displacement diminished with higher reinforcement stiffness and greater length of the reinforcement. Most of these studies carried out the seismic analysis of the MSE walls by varying different parameters and found MSE walls as stable and effective structures under dynamic loadings. However, most of these researches have not studied the effect of inclination of facing wall and the backfill parameter’s effects on dynamic responses.

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