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18
Model Tests of Seismic Stability of
Several Types of Soil Retaining
Walls
Junichi Koseki and Fumio Tatsuoka
University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Kenji Watanabe, Masaru Tateyama, and Kenichi Kojima
Railway Technical Research Institute, Tokyo, Japan
Yulman Munaf
University of Missouri -Rolla, Rolla, Missouri, U.S.A.
ABSTRACT
In order to establish a practical and relevant design procedure to evaluate the seismic
stability of different types of soil retaining walls against high seismic loads, a series
of irregular shaking tests was conducted on retaining wall models of six different
types. In some tests, after the first failure plane was formed in the backfill, the second
failure plane was formed at higher seismic loads. This can be explained by
considering the effects of strain localization in the backfill soil and associated
postpeak reduction in the shear resistance from peak to residual values along a
previously formed failure plane. Such behavior has not been observed in the tilting
tests and the sinusoidal shaking tests that were conducted on the same models in the
previous study. In the present series of tests, reinforced soil retaining wall models
with a full-height rigid facing exhibited ductile behavior compared to conventional-
type retaining wall models such as gravity-type, leaning-type, and cantilever-type
ones. The tilting of the conventional type retaining wall models was associated with
the concentration of subgrade reactions at the wall toe, which resulted in local soil
failure due to a loss of bearing capacity. Under similar conditions, tensile force in the
reinforcements of the reinforced soil retaining walls was mobilized effectively to
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