Performance of Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil Wall and Reinforced Earth Wall Subject to Blast Loading: Experimental and Numerical Study - Reinforced Soil Engineering: Advances in Research and Practice - page 369

Figures 12 and 13 show the variation of peak dynamic pressure and
percentage remaining of peak dynamic pressure, respectively, with the distance
from the facing of the RS wall for detonation events MD5-E1 and MD5-E2. The
peak dynamic pressure was reduced from approximately 160 kPa to 10 kPa for
event MD5-E1 and from approximately 120 kPa to 8 kPa for event MD5-E2. The
percentage remaining of the peak dynamic pressure at a distance of 3.5m from
the facing of the RS wall was 6% and 7%, respectively, for events MD5-E1 and
MD5-E2. In other words, the percentage reduction of the peak dynamic pressure
at a distance of 3.5 m from the facing of RS wall was 94% and 93%, respectively,
for events MD5-E1 and MD5-E2.

6 FEM MODELING OF RS WALL SUBJECT TO BLAST
LOADING

This section presents detail of the finite-element modeling of the geotextile
reinforced soil wall shown in Fig. 2 using PLAXIS (version 7.2), a two-
dimensional finite-element program. The blast loading response of the wall was
simulated using the newly implemented Dynamic Module in the program. Tan
et al. (2000) briefly reported this FEM blast study. There are very few published
reports on numerical modeling of RS walls subject to blast loadings, among
which is the work of Yogendrakumar et al. (1992, 1993). Their study concluded
that for the flexible RS slope structure examined, little additional dynamic strains

Figure 14

FEM geometry of the geotextile reinforced soil wall.