Technical Review of the Back-to-Back Mechanically Stabilized Earth Walls
Publication: Geo-Congress 2023
ABSTRACT
Back-to-back mechanically stabilized earth walls (BBMSEWs) have been increasingly used in the world, mostly for bridge abutments, highway and railway embankments, and coastal levees. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) provides guidelines for the design of BBMSEWs reinforced with steel reinforcements or geosynthetics under self-weight or vertical loads, which depend on gap or overlap distances between two-side reinforcements and wall height. However, BBMSEWs have also been used to support lateral loads or been subjected to seismic loading. Researchers have conducted numerical studies and centrifuge/shaking table tests to examine the behavior of BBMSEWs and compare some of the results with the FHWA design guidelines. This paper provides a technical review of recent studies on BBMSEWs and summarizes key findings from several important studies. The technical review is focused on the behavior of BBMSEWs, including critical slip surfaces, lateral earth pressures, tension in reinforcement, deformations of wall facing, and stability, and evaluates the effects of wall width to height ratio and reinforcement gap or overlap distance on the performance of BBMSEWs under static and dynamic loads, including seismic loading. The reduction of the back-to-back wall width reduces the lateral earth pressure behind the reinforced zone, the wall lateral deformation under self-weight, the maximum tensile force in reinforcement, and lateral resistance under lateral loading, but increases the factor of safety and the wall lateral deformation under seismic loading.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this chapter.
REFERENCES
Anastasopoulos, I., Georgarakos, T., Georgiannou, V., Drosos, V., and Kourkoulis, R. (2010). Seismic performance of bar-mat reinforced-soil retaining wall: Shaking table testing versus numerical analysis with modified kinematic hardening constitutive model. Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, 30(10), 1089–1105.
Benmebarek, S., and Djabri, M. (2017). “FEM to investigate the effect of overlapping-reinforcement on the performance of back-to-back embankment bridge approaches under self-weight.” Transportation Geotechnics, 11, 17–26.
Djabri, M., and Benmebarek, S. (2016). FEM analysis of back-to-back geosynthetic-reinforced soil retaining walls. Int. J. of Geosynthetics and Ground Eng. 2, 26.
El-Sherbiny, R., Ibrahim, E., and Salem, A. (2013). Stability of back-to-back mechanically stabilized earth walls. In Geo-Congress 2013: Stability and Performance of Slopes and Embankments III (pp. 555–565).
FHWA (Federal Highway Administration). (2009). Design and Construction of Mechanically Stabilized Earth Walls and Reinforced Soil Slopes – Volume I.
Han, J., and Leshchinsky, D. (2010). Analysis of back-to-back mechanically stabilized earth walls. Geotextiles and Geomembranes, 28(3), 262–267.
Hardianto, F. S., and Truong, K. M. (2010). Seismic deformation of back-to-back mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls. In Earth Retention Conference 3, 704–711.
Japanese Geotechnical Society. (2011). Geo-hazards During Earthquakes and Mitigation Measures-lessons and Recommendations from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, p. 84.
Leshchinsky, D., Vahedifard, F., and Leshchinsky, B. A. (2012). Revisiting bearing capacity analysis of MSE walls. Geotextiles and Geomembranes, 34, 100–107.
Pamuk, A., Kalkan, E., and Ling, H. I. (2005). Structural and geotechnical impacts of surface rupture on highway structures during recent earthquakes in Turkey. Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, 25(7-10), 581–589.
Siddharthan, R. V., Ganeshwara, V., Kutter, B. L., El-Desouky, M., and Whitman, R. V. (2004). Seismic deformation of bar mat mechanically stabilized earth walls. I: Centrifuge tests. Journal of geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering, 130(1), 14–25.
Sravanam, S. M., Balunaini, U., and Madhira, R. M. (2020). “Behavior of connected and unconnected back-to-back walls for bridge approaches.” International Journal of Geomechanics, ASCE, 20(7), 06020013.
Vankavelarr, D., and Leshchinsky, D. (2002). Inspection Guidelines for construction and Post-Construction of Mechanically Stabilized Earth Walls [Ebook] (first Ed.). Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware.
Yang, K. H., Wu, J. T., Chen, R. H., and Chen, Y. S. (2016). Lateral bearing capacity and failure mode of geosynthetic-reinforced soil barriers subject to lateral loadings. Geotextiles and Geomembranes, 44(6), 799–812.
Yazdandoust, M. (2017). Investigation on the seismic performance of steel-strip reinforced-soil retaining walls using shaking table test. Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, 97, 216–232.
Yazdandoust, M. (2018). Laboratory evaluation of dynamic behavior of steel-strip mechanically stabilized earth walls. Soils and Foundations, 58(2), 264–276.
Yazdandoust, M., Samee, A. A., and Ghalandarzadeh, A. (2022). Assessment of seismic behavior of back-to-back mechanically stabilized earth walls using 1g shaking table tests. Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, 155, 106078.
Zheng, Y., Sander, A. C., Rong, W., Fox, P. J., Shing, P. B., and McCartney, J. S. (2018). Shaking table test of a half-scale geosynthetic-reinforced soil bridge abutment. Geotechnical Testing Journal, 41(1), 20160268-20160268.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
History
Published online: Mar 23, 2023
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.