Numerical Study of Impact of Soil Anisotropy on Seismic Performance of Retaining Structure
Publication: International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 7, Issue 5
Abstract
Recent laboratory investigations indicate that the stress–strain–strength responses of granular soils are appreciably affected by the fabric orientation of the soil relative to the frame of principal stresses. Especially, a sand specimen exhibiting a dilative response during triaxial compression may show a contractive response during triaxial extension under otherwise identical conditions. This observation is of practical importance for applications concerning essentially undrained loading conditions, because the effective mean normal stress at failure, and consequently, the shear strength, associated with an undrained contractive path are considerably lower than those following a dilative path. This raises a question about the impact of soil anisotropy on seismic performance of retaining structures subjected to active and passive earth pressures, because the directions of principal stresses in retained soils for the two cases are very different. This note presents a set of fully coupled finite-element analyses incorporating an anisotropic sand model. The analyses reveal that the impact of fabric anisotropy could be significant when the retaining structure is under passive earth pressure conditions.
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Acknowledgments
Financial supports provided to the first writer by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NNSFC50678103) and the Science and Technology Research Program of Shenzhen, China (UNSPECIFIED200625), to the second writer by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (UNSPECIFIEDHKUST6002/02E), and to the second and third writers by the National Science Foundation of United States (NSFCMS-0201231) are gratefully acknowledged.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 7 • Issue 5 • September 2007
Pages: 382 - 388
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 24, 2006
Accepted: Apr 30, 2007
Published online: Sep 1, 2007
Published in print: Sep 2007
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