Influence of Parameters the Wall on Reinforced Soil Segmental Walls

The behaviour of retaining walls in geosynthetic reinforced soil is complex and requires studies and research to understand the mechanisms of rupture, the behaviour of the reinforcements in the soil and the behaviour of the main elements of the system: reinforcement-wall-soil. Several researches have been done on the use of geosynthetics as backfill massive reinforcement material (experimental studies, numerical analysis, reduced models ...). This parametric study was conducted to investigate the influence of numerical parameters of the wall which confront us in the projects, on the behaviour of walls on reinforced soil segmental walls. A 3.6m high wall is composed of modular blocks of earth sand reinforced with four geogrids layers was modelled. The properties of materials, the wall geometry, and the boundary conditions will be explained later. The finite difference computer program FLAC3D was used in this study. The results of this numerical study allowed to deduce the importance of each parameter of the wall selected for the behaviour of retaining walls in soil reinforced by geogrid. The inclination of wall "W" is of great importance for the calculation of retaining walls in modular blocks and can provide an important contribution to the horizontal balance of this type walls. The value of lateral displacements of the facing tends to continuously decrease with the increase of "W". More the wall is inclined plus the horizontal stresses behind the wall and values of the tensile stress in the layers of geogrid "T" decrease in an expressive manner. The dimensions of modular blocks (types) and the mechanical characteristics of modular blocks (category) have a remarkable effect on the calculation of retaining walls in modular blocks reinforced with layers of geogrid.