Strain Behavior of Soil and Reinforcement in Wrap Faced Reinforced Soil Walls Subjected to Seismic Excitation: Fid-Bau Portal

Strain Behavior of Soil and Reinforcement in Wrap Faced Reinforced Soil Walls Subjected to Seismic Excitation

Bhattacharjee, Arup / Krishna, A. Murali

Abstract Behavior of reinforced soil structure depends mainly on strain mobilization within reinforcement and its surrounding soil. This paper presents the soil and reinforcement strains developed within wrap faced reinforced soil wall subjected to dynamic excitation and their inter-dependence on formation of deformation zones. Octahedral shear strains developed on backfill soil and axial strains in reinforcement during the dynamic excitation are determined from the numerical simulations and analyzed. In general, the octahedral strain increments during the dynamic excitation are more at higher elevations near the end of reinforcement and the reinforcement strain increments are lower at top layers. Parametric studies are also conducted to study behavior of soil strain and reinforcement strain for different reinforcement configurations and backfill materials. The octahedral shear strain increments and reinforcement strain increments are influenced by the longer reinforcement layers, more number of reinforcement layer and higher backfill friction angle. It is observed that at the lower elevations the soil strains and reinforcement strains were not significantly affected by change in reinforcement length. So providing longer reinforcements up to 1/3–1/2 the height of wall would yield better performance results.