In Situ Earth Pressure and Reinforcement Strain in Tiered Mechanically Stabilized Earth Retaining Wall in Loess Plateau

This paper report a study of the stress and deformation characteristic of a Mechanically Stabilized Earth (MSE) retaining wall constructed on a loess plateau and the development of empirical relationships for the geotechnical parameters required for the design of structures such as earth retaining walls and slopes. Data for this study was acquired during the construction of an instrumented tiered MSE retaining wall in northern Shaanxi province, P. R. China. The data acquired includes the vertical pressure of backfilled soil, the horizontal earth pressure and the strain in the reinforcement strips. Based on the analysis of the acquired data, the following conclusions are made. The value of measured vertical earth pressure increases with the height of the backfill, but the measured values in most cases were smaller than the theoretical values; the distributions of horizontal earth pressure are affected by the location of earth pressure cells and soil properties; measured horizontal earth pressure increases with the height of backfill but are clearly smaller than the Rankine active earth pressure; the horizontal tensile strains on the reinforcement strips come larger with the backfill height; and the distribution rules of strains in the two retaining wall tiers are different. Strain curve on the upper setback shows a single peak distribution, while it on the lower portion of retaining wall shows double-peak distribution. Measured failure surface is similar with Rankine failure surface but comparatively different with "0.3 H Approach" line in the Code for design on retaining engineering structures of railway subgrade of China.