Numerical Analysis of Failure Mode of Geocell Flexible Retaining Wall

The geocell flexible retaining wall has a broad application prospect in the road slope protection. However, its failure mechanism is not systematically investigated. In this paper, by employing the FEM software Plaxis, the failure mode of the geocell flexible retaining wall is studied by the numerical analysis. The effects of soil strength, geocell structure strength, and location of high strength geocell structure layer on the failure mode are investigated based on the analysis of the numerical results. The research results indicate that the sliding surface is a curved surface which passes through the wall toe and intersects with the wall, which differs from the planar one in the Coulomb's soil wedge theory. Both soil strength and geocell structure strength have great effects on the location where the sliding surface intersects with the top of the backfill surface. However, their effects on the location where the sliding surface intersects with the wall back are not significant. In addition, the failure mode of the wall with the lower half part constructed by means of high strength geocell is almost the same with that of the whole wall constructed with high strength geocell. The results in the study will be useful for the determination of the sliding surface of the geocell flexible retaining wall when evaluating the earth pressures against it.