Numerical Investigation of a Full Scale Reinforced Soil Wall: A Case Study

Abstract

Reinforced soil walls (RSW) are gaining popularity as sustainable and cost effective alternatives to the concrete and masonry earth retaining structures. Limit equilibrium methods are usually used in checking the stability of these walls for its simplicity but most of these methods are empirical in nature and do not consider proper soil reinforcement interaction. Numerical analysis may offer as a useful tool in the design of reinforced soil walls however, it is still not widespread because of lack of guidance and proper training. In this paper, a case study has been considered in which a full scale soil wall is constructed and they are loaded to stress levels well beyond the working condition. A numerical analysis has been carried out using a commercially available software PLAXIS 2D to study the performance of a full scale wall at different construction stages and at the end of the construction. The backfill soil was modeled by Mohr-Coulomb constitutive relationship and the reinforcement as a tension member. The maximum reinforcement tensions at each level and the displacement of the wall facing were computed and the results are compared with the measured values. The present analysis shows a good matching with the measured values and helps to infuse confidence to the practitioner.