SEISMIC DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE OF GEOSYNTHETIC-REINFORCED SOIL STRUCTURES

Seismic design procedures are proposed for geosynthetic-reinforced soil structures. The procedures are based on a pseudo-static limit equilibrium analysis, which considers horizontal acceleration and incorporates a permanent displacement limit. Internal and external stability analyses are conducted to determine the required strength and length of geosynthetic, considering different modes of failure. Parametric studies illustrate the effects of seismic acceleration on the design of reinforced soil structures having different slope angles and soil properties. For vertical slopes at small seismic acceleration, tieback/compound failure dictates the required geosynthetic length. The length required to resist direct sliding increases rapidly as the seismic acceleration increases. This length may become impractical at moderate design accelerations. For such cases, an alternative approach based on a tolerable displacement against direct sliding is proposed for design. The proposed procedures are compared with the...