SEISMIC RESPONSE ANALYSIS OF A GEOSYNTHETIC-REINFORCED SOIL RETAININGWALL

The paper reports results from numerical experiments that were carried out to investigate the influence of reinforcement stiffness, reinforc ement length, and base boundary condition on the seismic response of a n idealized 6 m high geosynthetic-reinforced soil retaining wall const ructed with a very stiff continuous facing panel. The numerical models were excited at the foundation elevation by a variable-amplitude harm onic motion with a frequency close to the fundamental frequency of the reference structure. The two-dimensional, explicit dynamic finite dif ference program Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua (FLAC) was used t o carry out the numerical experiments. Numerical results illustrate th at the seismic response of the wall is very different when constructed with a base that allows the wall and soil to slide freely and when th e wall is constrained to rotate only about the toe. Parametric analyse s were also carried out to investigate the quantitative influence of t he damping ratio magnitude used in numerical simulations and the effec ts of distance and type of far-end truncated boundary. The response of the same wall excited by a scaled earthquake record was demonstrated to preserve qualitative features of wall displacement and reinforcemen t load distribution as that generated using the reference harmonic gro und motion applied at 3 Hz. The lessons learned in this study are of v alue to researchers using dynamic numerical modeling techniques to gai n insight into the seismic response of reinforced wall structures.