Numerical Simulation of Polymeric Strap Material Reinforced Walls Under Seismic Excitation

Abstract

This paper presents a comparison between the two-dimensional finite element and experimental results of shaking table tests on six one-third-scale polymeric strap or polymeric geostrip reinforced walls performed under seismic excitation at given peak ground accelerations $(\mathrm{PGAs})$ . The effects of initial tangent stiffness or the stiffness of polymeric strap material $(J_{\tan })$ and the slope angle of the cohesionless backfill material $(\eta )$ on the maximum relative displacement, $S_{\max (\mathrm{rel})}$ , of the reinforced earth wall, the values of the horizontal incremental dynamic earth pressure $(\Delta {\sigma }_{\mathrm{dynh}})$ with distributions, acceleration responses, horizontal dynamic active earth pressure coefficient $(K_{\mathrm{dynh}})$ and maximum dynamic tensile forces $(T_{\max })$ were assessed in this study. Moreover, the vertical dynamic active earth pressure coefficients $(K_{\mathrm{dynv}})$ and the angles of the resulting dynamic active force with horizontal $(\delta \prime )$ were predicted from the numerical analysis. Closely matched responses between the experimental and numerical studies were attained. Data obtained from experimental and numerical studies illustrated that increasing the slope angle of the cohesionless backfill material resulted in an increase in the values of horizontal displacement in the walls, and in dynamic earth pressure and root mean square acceleration $(\mathrm{RMSA})$ . Increasing the stiffness of the reinforcement material caused a decrease in horizontal reinforced earth wall displacement and increases in dynamic earth pressure. In addition, the conventional pseudostatic limit equilibrium methods overestimated $K_{\mathrm{dynh}}$ values, whereas they underestimated $K_{\mathrm{dynv}}$ values, and the recommended $\mathrm{RMSA}$ values by current design codes were not found to be compatible with the numerical and experimental results.