Shaking table study on seismic behavior of MSE wall with inclined backfill soils reinforced by polymeric geostrips

Abstract

In this study, the seismic behavior of a mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) wall with inclined backfill is investigated under sinusoidal acceleration excitations using a series of 1-g shaking table tests performed on the MSE model of 150 cm in height reinforced with polymeric geostrips. The effects of the stiffness of the reinforcement and slope angles of the backfill soil on the acceleration amplification factor (RMSA), the lateral displacement of the wall, the surface displacement of the backfill, the distribution of dynamic earth pressure along the height of reinforced wall and the strain distributions on the surfaces of the polymeric geostrips in three planes of the wall are investigated. The experimental results show that the dynamic earth pressure determined by traditional pseudo-static approaches leads to overestimated values. In addition, increasing the inclination angle of backfill soil results in the increase of surface settlement, lateral wall displacements, soil dynamic earth pressures, acceleration amplification factors and strains on the polymeric geostrip materials. The stiffness of the polymeric geostrip material has a negligible effect on the displacement, dynamic earth pressures and failure surface geometry.