Seismic stability of reinforced-soil retaining walls by tilting and shaking table tests

Abstract

A series of shaking table tests with irregular wave were carried out to investigate the seismic stability of reinforced-soil retaining and conventional type retaining walls. In these tests, reinforced-soil retaining wall models showed a ductile behavior compared to conventional type retaining wall model. When the conventional type wall started to tilt, the subsoil reaction force at the toe of wall suddenly decreased due to loss of bearing capacity. On the other hand, tensile force in the reinforcement of reinforced-soil walls was still mobilized even if the wall tilted outward largely. Though the measured angle of failure plane and the measured seismic earth pressure became close to the theoretical values (Mononobe-Okabe theory) by considering the response acceleration of the sliding soil wedge, they didn't agree completely. This may be because the actual sliding soil wedge is not a perfect rigid body as assumed in Mononobe-Okabe theory, and the deformation characteristics of sand are different under static load and dynamic load conditions.