HORIZONTAL DEFORMATION IN REINFORCED SOIL WALLS

The results of a numerical study of the horizontal deformations of rei nforced soil walls with a continuous panel facing are presented The mo st important material parameters are shown to be the reinforcement sti ffness density and the backfill soil friction angle. The soil-facing i nterface friction angle, reinforcement-soil friction angle, soil Young 's modulus, and facing rigidity are less important. For backfill soil having a friction angle greater than or equal to 35 degrees, the commo n practice of using a truncated reinforcement scheme with reinforcemen t length equal to 70% of the wall height was found to be justified. In creasing the reinforcement length did not significantly reduce deforma tions; however, reducing the length below about 45% of the wall height did significantly increase deformations. Equally spaced reinforcement was found to give lower deformations than a ''balanced'' scheme, in w hich the spacing of reinforcement decreases with depth to provide a mo re uniform distribution of force in the reinforcement layers. A compar ison of the numerical results and the results from an approximate meth od indicates reasonable agreement and identifies situations where the approximate method is most likely to give accurate results.