Vertical-Facing Loads in Steel-Reinforced Soil Walls
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 139, Issue 9
Abstract
The paper investigates the influence of backfill soil, foundation soil, and horizontal joint vertical compressibility on the magnitude of vertical loads developed in steel-reinforced soil concrete panel retaining walls at the end of construction. Measurements of toe loads recorded from instrumented field walls are reviewed and demonstrate that vertical toe loads can be much larger than the self-weight of the facing. In extreme cases, these loads can result in panel-to-panel contact leading to concrete spalling at the front of the wall. Vertical loads in excess of panel self-weight have been ascribed to relative movement between the backfill soil and the panels that can develop panel-soil interface shear and downdrag loads at the connections between the panels and the steel-reinforcement elements. A two-dimensional finite-element model is developed to systematically investigate the influence of backfill soil, foundation soil, bearing pad stiffness, and panel-soil interaction on vertical loads in the panel facing. The results show that an appropriately selected number and type of compressible bearing pads can be effective in reducing vertical compression loads in these structures and at the same time ensure an acceptable vertical gap between concrete panels. The parametric analyses have been restricted to a single wall height (16.7 m) and embedment depth of 1.5 m, matching a well-documented field case. However, the observations reported in the paper are applicable to other similar structures. The general numerical approach can be used by engineers to optimize the design of the bearing pads for similar steel-reinforced soil wall structures using available commercial finite-element model packages together with simple constitutive models.
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Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the support of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech (UPC) and the funding received through the research project BIA2010-20789-C04-01 from the Ministry of Education and Innovation of Spain. This funding allowed the first author to spend six months at the GeoEngineering Centre at Queen’s-RMC during which time the research work reported in this paper was performed. Finally, the authors are grateful to David Runser, who clarified a number of details regarding the reference wall case used in this study.
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Information
Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 139 • Issue 9 • September 2013
Pages: 1419 - 1432
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 18, 2012
Accepted: Nov 29, 2012
Published online: Dec 1, 2012
Published in print: Sep 1, 2013
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