Internal stability analysis of segmental geosynthetic-reinforced soil retaining walls subjected to seismic loading

Geosynthetic-reinforced soil(GRS) segmental retaining wall was developed with the increasing popularity due to its good performance,low price and aesthetic appearance.It had been proved by practices and experiments that GRS retaining walls exhibited good seismic performance,however,it was still necessary to conduct seismic design of the structure.The internal stability analysis is a critical step in the seismic design,which to certain extent determines the layout and density of reinforcements.Nonlinear dynamic finite element method was used to investigate the seismic internal stabilities of this kind of earth structures with different reinforcement densities and different earthquake excitations.The effects of reinforcement creep on the seismic internal stability were also analyzed.The results were then compared to those obtained using the suggested internal stability analysis method by NCMA.It was found that with regular reinforcement the locations of the maximum reinforcement loads from the FE analysis were different to those using the suggested method,with the lower portion farther away from the facing;the distributions of the maximum reinforcement load along the height direction were considerably different;the creep of reinforcement led to load redistribution in the reinforcements.