Effects of Relative Creep of Geosynthetic-Reinforcements on the Responses of Geosynthetic MSE Walls

Abstract

The creep of geosynthetics leads to the decrease of long-term strength and the increase of deformation. More importantly, the influences of creep of geosynthetics are also affected by the creep properties of soils. In this paper, the effects of creep of geosynthetic-reinforcements are investigated using Finite Element procedure, on the context of its relations to the creep of backfill soils. The nonlinearity and creep of both geosynthetics and backfills were considered in the procedure. A model MSE walls at a height of eight-meter was analyzed using the Finite Element program ABAQUS. Geosynthetic reinforcements with different rates of creep were analyzed to investigate the effects of relative creep on the responses of the model MSE wall. It is found from the analysis that the relative creep rate between geosynthetic reinforcement and backfill soil is very important to the responses of the model wall. Both the reinforcement loads and the stress states in the soils were influenced by the relative creep rates of the two materials.