Numerical Analysis of an Instrumented Steel-Reinforced Soil Wall
Publication: International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 15, Issue 1
Abstract
The paper describes the results and lessons learned using a FEM model to simulate quantitative performance features of the Minnow Creek steel-strip reinforced soil wall structure located in the United States. The Minnow Creek Wall structure was constructed and instrumented in 1999. It is a unique case study because of the comprehensive measurements that were taken to record a wide range of wall performance features. Two different constitutive models for the soil were used (a linear-elastic Mohr-Coulomb model and hardening soil model with a Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion), and numerical outcomes were compared with physical measurements. The numerical results were shown to be sensitive to boundary conditions assumed at the toe of the wall. The generally encouraging agreement between physical and numerically predicted results gives confidence that commercial FEM software packages can be useful for the analysis and design of these types of structures, provided that care is taken in the selection of input parameters.
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-Barcelona Tech (UPC) and the funding received through the research project BIA2010-20789-C04-01 by the Ministry of Education and Innovation of Spain. This funding allowed the first author to spend 6 months at the GeoEngineering Centre at Queen’s-RMC at the Royal Military College (RMC) of Canada, during which time the research work reported in this paper began. Finally, the authors are grateful to David J. Runser, who clarified a number of details regarding the Minnow Creek Wall construction.
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Information
Published In
International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 15 • Issue 1 • February 2015
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 16, 2013
Accepted: Feb 18, 2014
Published online: Feb 20, 2014
Published in print: Feb 1, 2015
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