Application of Sliding Block Concept to Geosynthetic-Constructed Facilities - Reinforced Soil Engineering: Advances in Research and Practice - page 91

Application of Sliding Block Concept
to Geosynthetic-Constructed
Facilities

Hoe I. Ling
Columbia University, New York, New York, U.S.A.

1 INTRODUCTION

The sliding block concept has found several applications in geotechnical
earthquake engineering. The concept was proposed by Newmark (1965) and
Whitman (Marcuson, 1995). A brief review of recent applications of sliding
block is given by Ling (2001). This chapter gives an overview of the application
to geosynthetic-reinforced soil retaining wall and waste containment liner. In
both cases, direct sliding mode of failure was considered. The equations to
determine seismic factor of safety, yield acceleration, and permanent
displacement are presented. The set of equations for seismic design degenerates
to those of static conditions when seismic coefficients are assumed as zero.
In the sliding soil block, earthquake inertia force is considered pseudo-
static through a seismic coefficient (Sano, 1916), which is a fraction of the weight
of potential sliding soil mass. For combined horizontal and vertical seismic
accelerations, Ling (2001) used the functions, k and u (Fig. 1)

q

k h þð

2

k ¼ 1 k v Þ ð 1 Þ

^

k h

tan u ¼ ð 2 Þ

1 k v

^