Numerical Analysis of Reinforced Soil wall

Abstract

Various Limit Equilibrium methods are used in the conventional analysis to find the minimum factor of safety along with its critical failure mechanism, often considering a particular assumed slip surface. Though they are effective for simple geotechnical problems, but may encounter complications while dealing with complex geotechnical problems. A finite element (FE) approach provides more accurate results, as concluded by various researchers in the recent era. Hence, an FE-based analysis in order to study the stability of a reinforced soil (RS) wall is carried out. Astonishingly, limited attention is given to the study of the behaviour of these RS walls using Limit Analysis (LA) method and many doubts still persist as to the response and performance of these structures. Hence, the use of LA method was investigated in this research, providing an effective mean to determine the critical slip surface. The influence of component properties like the angle of internal friction of backfill soil, vertical spacing of the reinforcement and length of the reinforcement has been examined. Comparisons are made between the results obtained from FE and LA based approach for RS wall resting on flexible foundation and rigid foundation. Different soil models in FEM are studied. Dynamic analysis is carried out for RS wall for various parameters by LA. For a small scale model obtained from the literature, the experimental results were compared with analytical results obtained from LE method, LA method and FE method. Measured values for full-scale RS wall conducted in previous literature are compared with values obtained from FE method.