Analysis on seismic behavior of geogrid-reinforced retaining wall subjected to horizontal and vertical excitations

A sand model that was capable of simulating the pressure-dependency and cyclic hardening behavior of sandy soils was used to model the back-filled soil,and a bounding surface elasto-plastic model for geosynthetics that could capture the cyclic hysteresis of geogrids was used to model the reinforcement.Slip-elements were employed to describe the soil-structure interaction behavior in the geosynthetic-reinforced soil(GRS) retaining wall.Horizontal and vertical excitations were considered simultaneously in the analyses.The study was focused on the deformation of the retaining wall and the internal forces in the reinforcements and the object of study included the effects of the vertical excitation,the reinforcement length,the reinforcement spacing,the weight of the facing blocks,the frictions between soil and facing blocks as well as those between two facing blocks.