Parametric Study of Mechanically Stabilized Earth Wall Using GEO 5

Abstract

A mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) wall is an engineered system consisting of alternating layers of soil reinforcement and compacted backfill material fixed to the wall facing and supported on a foundation. The present study is focused on parametric analysis of MSE walls using an analytical method, GEO5 MSE to determine the factor of safety of the wall. The factor of safety of a 10 m high MSE wall was computed with respect to varying environments of backfill soil, the length of reinforcement to height of the wall (L/H), reinforcement characteristic strength and spacing of reinforcement. This study mainly focuses on finding out how variations in the factors affect the behaviour of the wall and its factor of safety. It was observed that improvement in the angle of friction leads to an increase the factor of safety. It was also noted that, increase in L/H ratio from 0.4 to 1.0 showed an increase in factor of safety by 15.92% and increase in reinforcement spacing from 0.2 m to 1 m showed a decrease in factor of safety by 74.52%. Factor of safety was also found to increase with an increase in characteristic strength of embedded reinforcement. From the parametric analysis, MSE walls were developed to replace the failed retaining walls at various locations in India.