Abstract
The behaviour of retaining walls in geosynthetic reinforced soil is complex and requires studies and research to understand the mechanisms of rupture, the behaviour of the reinforcements in the soil and the behaviour of the main elements of the system: reinforcement-wall-soil. Several researches have been done on the use of geosynthetics as backfill massive reinforcement material (experimental studies, numerical analysis, reduced models ...). This parametric study was conducted to investigate the influence of numerical parameters of the wall which confront us in the projects, on the behaviour of walls on reinforced soil segmental walls. A 3.6m high wall is composed of modular blocks of earth sand reinforced with four geogrids layers was modelled. The properties of materials, the wall geometry, and the boundary conditions will be explained later. The finite difference computer program FLAC3D was used in this study. The results of this numerical study allowed to deduce the importance of each parameter of the wall selected for the behaviour of retaining walls in soil reinforced by geogrid. The inclination of wall "W" is of great importance for the calculation of retaining walls in modular blocks and can provide an important contribution to the horizontal balance of this type walls. The value of lateral displacements of the facing tends to continuously decrease with the increase of "W". More the wall is inclined plus the horizontal stresses behind the wall and values of the tensile stress in the layers of geogrid "T" decrease in an expressive manner. The dimensions of modular blocks (types) and the mechanical characteristics of modular blocks (category) have a remarkable effect on the calculation of retaining walls in modular blocks reinforced with layers of geogrid.
Highlights
Retaining walls reinforced by geosynthetics and constructed with concrete block are spreading in recent years because of their good performance, aesthetics, the value and the swiftness of construction
In this article our interest is related to the use of software FLAC-3D (Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continued) to evaluate and analyze numerically the behavior of a retaining wall in modular block reinforced by horizontal layers of geogrid: horizontal displacements of the wall "Ux", the horizontal stresses behind the wall "σh", vertical stresses in the soil base "σv" and the tensile stress in the layers of geogrid "T"
In this article our interest is related to the use of software FLAC-3D (Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continued) in order to evaluate and analyze numerically the influence of several parameters of the wall on the behavior of a retaining wall in modular block reinforced by geogrids
Summary
Retaining walls reinforced by geosynthetics and constructed with concrete block (modular) are spreading in recent years because of their good performance, aesthetics, the value and the swiftness of construction. The flexible nature of the segmental retaining wall systems and the small size of the modular blocks allow building walls to complex geometry, at different heights and several levels under adverse conditions of the site. Several researches have been done on the use of geosynthetics as backfill massive reinforcement material that we quoted hereafter some examples of studies based on numerical modeling: Bathurst. K [1a] Examined numerical modeling work of other authors who were focused on the walls in soil reinforced by geosynthetic. Their survey focused on numerical approaches that have used the finite element method (FEM) and the finite difference method (FDM). Examples of the FDM applied on soil reinforced walls which have used the program (FLAC) are: [3,4,5,6,7,8]
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