Estimation of horizontal displacements for geosynthetic reinforced soil wall

Abstract

Nowadays, the geotechnical design trend is increasingly heading towards the serviceability limit state. However, the current practice in the design of geosynthetic reinforced soil (GRS) walls mostly relies on ultimate limit state. Commonly available design software programs provide typical factor of safety values against various failure modes. With increasing height and variability in GRS walls, the deformation characteristics of the GRS walls also become an important parameter in the design. In this paper, an expression has been developed to predict the horizontal deformation of a GRS wall using a set of data obtained from about sixty-four finite element model configurations. The horizontal deformation expression includes wall height, internal friction angle and elastic modulus of backfill, length, spacing and stiffness of geosynthetic reinforcements. It has been found out that all these parameters contribute to the horizontal displacement of a GRS wall. In addition, some comparisons have been made to reveal the influence of each individual parameter on the horizontal displacement of the wall.