Bulging of Reinforced Retaining Walls

Abstract

Recently reinforced retaining walls secure their position as a stabilized method of construction replacing concrete retaining walls gradually. However, in the event of using extensible reinforcement, a bulging phenomenon can be happened in the front of reinforced retaining walls. Bulging of reinforced retaining walls means a phenomenon that, in the height of an arbitrary block, the upper part and the lower part of the block don't secure a relative position in design. Therefore, it is judged that it has the necessity to be examined in design since reinforcement needs metamorphosis to some degree to display tensile force. Therefore, the study examined about how extensibility of reinforcement had an effect on movement of reinforced retaining walls through a small-scale model test with aluminum rods. The study used Changhoji(traditional korean paper made from mulberry bark) as inextensible reinforcement and membrane as extensible reinforcement. As the result of the test, rigidity of reinforcement had a lot of effects on displacement of reinforced retaining walls and generally occurrence point of the maximum horizontal displacement had a tendency transferring to the upper part of walls according to rigidity of reinforcement was increased.