Modal Studies on the Performance of Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil Walls Under Static Local Loading

Abstract

AbstractGeosynthetic Reinforced Soil (GRS) wall is a composite structure consisting of fill material and closely spaced reinforcement that gives stability to the walls. These are economical and are widely used nowadays over conventional retaining walls. This study focuses mainly on the performance of the GRS walls under static loading. The position of static load application is mainly studied. Parametric studies are carried out to understand the effects of reinforcement strength, reinforcement spacing, facing stiffness, length of reinforcement and backfill soil type on the minimum offset distance of the footing. It was found that the bearing capacity of the wall increases as the offset distance increases from the facing of the wall and an optimum offset distance was found between 0.2H and 0.4H in most of the cases. The increase in stiffness of facing increases the bearing capacity by nearly five times at an optimum offset distance. When strength of reinforcement was increased it improves the performance of GRS walls and reduces the displacements by 40% at optimum offset distance. Decrease in spacing increases the performance of GRS wall, but 0.2 m spacing increases the number of reinforcement to double the value and for 0.6 m spacing, the displacements were very high compared to 0.4 m spacing. Increase in length of reinforcement increases the performance of GRS walls. In this study, the performance of GRS walls was studied by conducting numerical analysis using finite element software Plaxis 2D.KeywordsOffset distanceGeosynthetic reinforced soil wallDisplacementBackfill soilPlaxis 2D