Pseudo-static seismic analysis of reinforced soil wall - Effect of oblique displacement

Reinforced soil structures designed and constructed based on numerous methods available for the stability of walls have performed well even during major seismic events worldwide. This could be attributed to the conservatism of the design procedure adopted to analyze the seismic stability of reinforced soil walls considering only the axial resistance of the reinforcement to pullout in addition to the widely perceived conservatism that result from the usage of conservative residual shear strength parameters of the backfill. The failure plane in a reinforced soil structure, however, almost always intersects the reinforcement layers obliquely thus subjecting the reinforcement to oblique (non-axial) force by the sliding mass of soil which results in mobilization of additional pullout resistance. This paper deals with the pseudo-static seismic analysis of reinforced soil wall considering oblique force or displacement and using the horizontal slice method. Parametric studies quantify the effects of different wall, backfill and reinforcement parameters on the factor of safety of the reinforced soil wall subjected to pseudo-static seismic force considering the increase in tension due to non-axial pull or displacement. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.