Analysis of Soil Nailing under Earthquake Loading in Malaysia Using Finite Element Method

Abstract

Soil nailing has become a widely accepted method and offers a practical solution towards construction of permanent retaining wall, slope stabilization and protection of existing cuts from failure. In Malaysia, soil nailing is typically performed on cut slope and installed with grouting as preventatives method due to erosion problem. However, although the effectiveness of soil nailing system may be well understood by practitioners, the slope failure and collapses of deep excavation are continuously occurs, especially for the construction in the earthquake zone. Malaysia has numerous experiences of earthquake even this country has been categorized as low seismicity group. Hence, it is become important in the scope of geotechnical engineering to analyze and study the effect of earthquake to soil nailing systems in Malaysia. Aims of this paper are to focus and study this technical issue using the application of finite element program. This research study selects PGA of 0.08g based on the location of major population in Malaysia. Safety factor was calculated in this finite element program using phi-c reduction. Soil nailing relatively give satisfactory response under seismic, so pseudo-static method is applied for seismic loading study. Based on the static analysis results, the FOS for the deep excavation stabilized with soil nailing is 1.54. However, by considering the earthquake or seismic loading, the FOS reduces to 1.16 and the percentage of reduction is about 25%. Total displacement was observed slightly difference in soil nailing analysis during an earthquake and static analysis