Experimental study on seismic response of soil-nailed walls with permanent facing

Abstract

A series of 1-g shaking table tests were performed on five reduced-scale soil-nailed wall models to investigate the influence of peak acceleration, loading duration, and nail length on seismic response of the soil-nailed walls in terms of the distribution of shear modulus (G) and damping ratio (D) in soil-nailed mass, the axial force distribution along the nails and the distribution of dynamic lateral earth pressure behind the surface. It was found that the seismic response of walls highly depends on the length of nails and input motion parameters. By introducing a new non-dimensional parameter (Gglobal) for soil-nailed walls, it was observed that the values of G, G/G0, and D are strongly dependent of confining pressure, L/H ratio, and shear strain levels, so that the variation trend of these parameters with γ is well expressed as an exponential equation with a high correlation coefficient. Additionally, a proper convergence was found between Tmax/H.γs.SV.SH and L/H ratio at different levels of acceleration and duration, so that Tmax/H.γs.SV.SH can be defined as a function of L/H ratio and seismic parameters for different rows of nail. Also, It was discovered that the values of predicated earth pressure by conventional methods in static and seismic conditions are too conservative and these methods predict the location of the resultant lateral earth pressure higher than the actual point.