Etude de la sensibilité de la réponse sismique à la disposition du renforcement des remblais d’accès de pont

Abstract

Reinforced soil Retaining walls with two opposite sides (Back-to-back) are commonly used for embankments approaching bridges. However, available design guidelines for this wall system are limited. The distance between two opposing walls is a key parameter used for determining the analysis methods in the federal highways administration guidelines (FHWA). Two extreme cases are identified: (1) reinforcements from both sides meet in the middle or overlap, and (2) the walls are far apart, independent of each other. The objective of this research is to investigate the effect of the distance between opposite walls, the overlap of reinforcement, reinforced soil quality and intensity of an earthquake on internal and external stability of flexible reinforced retaining walls with geosynthetics reinforcements under static and dynamic conditions. Finite element method incorporated in the PLAXIS software is used for this research. Parametric studies were carried out by varying five important parameters, i.e., distance between opposite walls, quality of backfill material, distance of overlapping, the horizontal acceleration and frequency of seismic loading to investigate their effects on the behavior of retaining walls for embankments approaching bridges. The effect of the connection of reinforcements in the middle, when back-to-back walls are close, was also investigated