Model Tests of Seismic Stability of Several Types of Soil Retaining Walls - Reinforced Soil Engineering: Advances in Research and Practice - page 321

Figure 10 Relationships between angle of failure plane and seismic coefficient when
respective distinct failure plane was formed.

shaking tests are also shown as well as the theoretical relationships based on the
Mononobe-Okabe method (Okabe 1924; Mononobe and Matsuo, 1929). In
computing the theoretical relationships, the shear resistance angle f of the
backfill and subsoil layers was set equal to f peak ( ¼ 51 8 ) obtained from the PSC
tests mentioned above, and the frictional angle d at the interface between the
backfill and the wall facing with sandpaper was set equal to 3/4f peak . The reason
for the latter setting will be explained later.
The following trends of behavior can be seen from Fig. 10:

1. In the tilting tests, the observed relationships between a and (k h ) fp were

close to the respective theoretical relationship, irrespective of the wall
type.

2. In the sinusoidal shaking tests, the value of a for each RW was

generally similar to the one observed in the tilting tests, while the value
of (k h ) fp was larger than the one in the tilting test. The latter difference
depended on the RW type, generally larger for the reinforced soil RWs
than for the three conventional RWs.

3. In the irregular shaking tests, the value of (k h ) fp was largest among the

three types of loading conditions, and the value of a was generally
smaller than the ones observed in the tilting and sinusoidal shaking
tests.