Lateral Displacements of Geosynthetic-Reinforced Soil Walls in a Tiered Configuration
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 148, Issue 9
Abstract
Current design methods for geosynthetic-reinforced soil (GRS) walls in a tiered configuration mostly focus on wall stability by determining required tensile strength and layout of reinforcement. A finite difference numerical model was firstly verified with the available field measured results of a single GRS wall and model test results of a two-tiered GRS wall in the literature, and then used to analyze lateral displacements of multitiered GRS walls with modular concrete block facing. A parametric study was conducted to evaluate the effect of backfill properties (friction angle and cohesion), elastic modulus of foundation soil, reinforcement parameters (stiffness, spacing, and length), and tiered wall geometry (offset distance, number of tiers, and height ratio of adjacent tiers), on facing lateral displacements of multitiered GRS walls. The numerical results showed that an increase of the shear strength of the backfill by its friction angle or cohesion reduced the wall lateral displacement. An increase in the reinforcement length of the upper tier in the two-tiered wall from 0.35 times to 0.60 times the total wall height resulted in approximately 21.3% and 34.7% reduction in the maximum lateral displacements for lower and upper tiers, respectively. The reinforcement stiffness and spacing had a significant impact on facing lateral displacements whereas the ratio of reinforcement stiffness to spacing had a negligible influence. An increase of the offset distance or a reduction of the number of tiers remarkably reduced wall facing lateral displacements. An analytical solution was developed for estimating the lateral displacement of a two-tiered GRS wall and compared well with the numerical results.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all date, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This research work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants Nos. 41877255 and 52078182), the Hebei Province Natural Science Foundation (Grants No. E2018202108), and Graduate Student Innovation Foundation of Hebei Province (Grants No. CXZZBS2021027). Their financial support is gratefully acknowledged.
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Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 148 • Issue 9 • September 2022
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© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Aug 14, 2021
Accepted: Apr 26, 2022
Published online: Jun 17, 2022
Published in print: Sep 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Nov 17, 2022
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