Post-Earthquake Investigation of Several Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil Retaining Walls and Slopes During Ji-Ji Earthquake of Taiwan - Reinforced Soil Engineering: Advances in Research and Practice - page 294

Figure 3 Major sites of investigation.

displacement resulting from the earthquake (Fig. 4a) . Figures 5a and b show
conventional reinforced concrete retaining walls that exhibited cracks along the
horizontal and vertical construction joints, respectively. Figure 5c shows a typical
case of structural failure of the reinforced concrete retaining wall.
A modular block retaining wall was constructed at this residential site (Fig.
6) . The wall was 5m high (24 blocks) at its tallest point, and accessibility to the
bottom of this wall was not possible during the time of investigation. To the right
of the structure is an unreinforced modular block retaining wall that collapsed.
The height of this unreinforced wall was 2.4 m (12 blocks), and a failure surface
was observed 2.2m behind the wall. Note that the reinforced concrete wall,
which was attached to one of the ends of this modular block wall, tilted

significantly.
The geosynthetic reinforced retaining wall is found on the left of the
structure. The modular block reinforced retaining wall failed at two locations.