Experimental Study on Performance of Multi-Tiered Reinforced Soil Retaining Walls

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Civil Engineering Department, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

2 civil engineering, razi university, kermanshah, iran

3 Civil Engineering Department, Kermanshah University of Technology

Abstract

In reinforced soil walls, if the wall divided into several sections (here called tiers) it can be called multi-tiered reinforced soil retaining walls (MRSRW). These walls are considered to be a good solution especially if the wall’s height need to increase. The main objective of the study was finding the effects of tiers horizontal distance, offset distance between adjacent tiers and number of tiers on the lateral deflection of the wall facing as well as ultimate bearing capacities of a strip footing located at top of the wall. In this study, a small scale experimental programme on MRSRW were carried out where a total of 12 experiments were performed under static loading condition. The results showed that by increasing the tiers’ width and number of tiers in MRSRW, the horizontal deflection and settlement of footing on the crest of the wall was considerably reduced. Besides, when the tires’ width increased, the lateral deflection along the wall height was significantly reduced, especially at top of the wall. The result indicated that in order to attain the highest interaction between the top and bottom sections of the MRSRWs, having four reinforcement layers and one tier (with tier’s width/wall’s height ratio equal to 0.35) can provide the best result in regard to both lowest lateral deflection and highest bearing capacity of footing installed at top of the wall.

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