Influence of various parameters on sesimic-induced permanent displacement of geosynthetic reinforced segmental retaining walls

Abstract

The study on the seismic performance of reinforced soil structures has received muchattention following 1995 Kobe Earthquake, and especially with the failures reported during Ji - Ji Earthquake in Taiwan. After 1999 Adapazarı Earthquake, Turkey realized theimportance of the earthquakes in many ways especially in structures. The use dry-stackedconcrete blocks in geosynthetic reinforced soil retaining wall construction has gainedpopularity throughout the world and is becoming widespread in Turkey. The facingconsisting of block layers provides an aesthetically pleasing, cost-effective alternative,easy to construct and the performance of geosynthetic-reinforced soil structures underseismic loading are reported to be satisfactory, but some suffered from minor cracking andsliding after major earthquakes. This study is aimed to investigate the influence of reinforcement length, wall height,block width, reinforcement spacing and wall inclination angle on seismic-inducedpermanent displacements. Permanent displacements associated with three slidingmechanisms are investigated; (1) external sliding along the base of total structure; (2) internal sliding along a reinforcement layer and through the facing column; and (3) blockinterface shear between facing column units. A pseudo-static method based on Mononobe-Okabe earth pressure theory and NCMA̕s Segmental Retaining Wall Seismic DesignManual is used to determine the value of critical acceleration associated with each potential failure mechanism. Newmark̕s sliding block displacement, and Bathurst andCai̕s empirical methods are used for the displacement calculations and 1999 SakaryaEarthquake is taken as Earthquake data. At last, as a verification Valencia Wall permanentdisplacement after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake is calculated using this calculations andresults are compared.