A STUDY TO EVALUATE THE SEISMIC RESPONSE OF ROAD EMBANKMENTS

摘要

A crucial matter related to roads in seismic areas is to ensure viability during the post-seismic stages, especially if the road represents an important or unique way to reach towns that may be potentially hit by strong earthquakes. Verification of road viability under seismic actions requires not only safety assessment of the failure mechanisms which may jeopardize single road components (embankment, viaduct, bridge, etc.) but also evaluation of performance. Viability of a road may be compromised by an unsatisfactory response of road embankments. The vehicle flux may be, in fact, inhibited or reduced if a road embankment suffers global instability mechanisms or significant permanent displacements mainly at the contact with structural elements (e.g., viaducts, bridges) that do not move significantly. In this case the embankment permanent displacements turn out into steps or separations. The paper accounts for the different stages followed to study the seismic performance of the road embankments located along a sample road branch of about 5 km. Preliminary activities consisted in characterizing the geological area of the sample road, in selecting the potentially vulnerable embankments and in carrying out in-situ investigations to properly characterize the physical and mechanical properties of the embankments and foundation soils. A seismological study of the sample area was performed in order to characterize the reference seismic actions needed for the numerical analyses. The seismic response of the embankments was evaluated by a pseudo-dynamic approach and an advanced dynamic model. In the latter, the equations describing dynamic equilibrium and compatibility were merged with an elastoplastic combined-hardening constitutive law that properly models soil response under cyclic loads.. The embankment's seismic performance was predicted in terms of permanent settlements at the embankment top surface versus the peak acceleration of the reference input motions.