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Geomechanics and Engineering Volume 10, Number 5, May 2016 , pages 635-655 DOI: https://doi.org/10.12989/gae.2016.10.5.635 |
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Seismic response of geosynthetic reinforced retaining walls |
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Mehrab Jesmani, Mehrad Kamalzare and Babak Bahrami Sarbandi
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| Abstract | ||
| The effects of reinforcement on the horizontal and vertical deformations of geosynthetic reinforced retaining walls are investigated under a well-known seismic load (San Jose earthquake, 1955). Retaining walls are designed with internal and external stability (with appropriate factor of safety) and deformation is chosen as the main parameter for describing the wall behavior under seismic load. Retaining walls with various heights (6, 8, 10, 12 and 14 meter) are optimized for geosynthetics arrangement, and modeled with a finite element method. The stress-strain behavior of the walls under a well-known loading type, which has been used by many previous researchers, is investigated. A comparison is made between the reinforced and non-reinforced systems to evaluate the effect of reinforcement on decreasing the deformation of the retaining walls. The results show that the reinforcement system significantly controls the deformation of the top and middle of the retaining walls, which are the critical points under dynamic loading. It is shown that the optimized reinforcement system in retaining walls under the studied seismic loading could decrease horizontal and vertical deformation up to 90% and 40% respectively. | ||
| Key Words | ||
| reinforced soils; retaining walls; geosynthetic; seismic load; numerical method | ||
| Address | ||
| (1) Mehrab Jesmani: Department of Civil Engineering, Imam Khomeini International University, Ghazvin, Iran; (2) Mehrad Kamalzare: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, USA; (3) Babak Bahrami Sarbandi: 3Department of Civil Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran. | ||