Sliding stability and lateral displacement analysis of reinforced soil retaining walls

Abstract

Field observations have demonstrated that reinforced soil retaining walls generally have superior seismic performance when compared to traditional gravity retaining walls. However, current design guidelines for reinforced soil retaining walls are typically based on pseudo-static methods of analysis, which involve simplifying assumptions. For instance, the reinforced zone is usually assumed as a rigid body in external stability calculations. As a result, the influences of reinforcement arrangement and properties on the sliding stability and displacement of the wall cannot be accounted for in their design. Additionally, the soil shear strength is assumed to be constant in conventional displacement calculations using the Newmark sliding block method. In this paper, an analysis method is proposed to determine the yield acceleration and lateral displacement of reinforced soil walls that includes soil shear strength mobilization and a two-part wedge planar failure mechanism. The proposed method is validated against the results of laboratory model tests, and influences of factors such as ground acceleration coefficients, and reinforcement and backfill properties on the stability of the wall are examined.