An experimental approach to estimate behaviour of reinforced earth seawalls

摘要

Reinforced earth structures are usually in contact with water, especially if these structures arerndesigned as waterfront structures such as a riverbank protection structure, an earth dam or a marinernwall. In these cases, the effects of saturation must be considered in the design and analysis stages.rnFor reinforced earth seawalls, which are located in a tidal environment and subjected to the dynamicrnloading of sea waves, the effects of saturation are of particular concern.rnThis paper aims to examine the behaviour of a saturated reinforced sand element (eg. a reinforcedrnsample in triaxial test) in an undrained fully saturated condition. The results of this study will be usedrnlater to describe the behaviour of a fully saturated reinforced earth seawall under the effect of rapidrnimpact loading due to sea wave or ship impact.rnInitially, triaxial tests were performed on dry and fully saturated reinforced and unreinforced beachrnsand. The results of saturated reinforced and unreinforced samples were compared with those of dryrnsamples. In this comparison, different features such as the stress-strain relationship, failure mode andrnstrength parameters ? and c were considered.