Irregular shaking table tests on seismic stability of reinforced-soil retaining walls

摘要

In order to establish practical design procedures to evaluate seismic stability of different types of retaining walls against high seismic loads, a series of shaking table tests with irregular wave were conducted on retaining wall models consisting of six different types. In these tests, reinforced-soil retaining wall models with a rigid full-height facing exhibited ductile behavior compared to conventional type retaining wall model such as gravity-type, leaning-type and cantilever type ones. This is because when the conventional type wall started to tilt, the subsoil reaction force at the toe of wall suddenly decreased due to loss of bearing capacity. On the other hand, under similar conditions, tensile force in the reinforcement of rein-forced-soil walls could be mobilized effectively to resist against the overturning.