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 370

in the reinforcements were produced, and there was significant reduction of
dynamic and permanent soil slope deformation when subjected to explosive blast
loadings. This is in good agreement with the findings of the present study.
The FEM geometry of the geotextile reinforced soil wall model is shown in
Fig. 14. The height of the wall is 3 m, and the depth of reinforcement is 4.5 m.
The vertical distance between the geotextile reinforcement is 0.3 m. A surcharge
of 19.6 kN/m 2 , due to the weight of the concrete slab, was applied on top of the
RS wall. The facing of the wall was wrapped around with the geotextile
reinforcement. The boundaries are far enough such that they will not influence
the results, and viscous boundaries are imposed on the left and bottom limit of the
FEM model. It is assumed that the RC (reinforced concrete) wall would behave
elastically in dynamic events. Hence, an axial stiffness, EA, and a flexural
rigidity, EI, of an equivalent wall thickness of 140mm are specified in this model.
The elastic modulus of the RC wall is assumed to be equal to 25Mpa.
Singapore tropical residual soil found at the test site was used as backfill
material for the reinforced soil wall. The soil behind the reinforced soil was also
Singapore residual soil but with slightly different soil properties due to a lower
level of soil compaction. The material model used for both soil types is the
Mohr-Coulomb model. The properties of these two Mohr -Coulomb soil models
are shown in Table 5. The dynamic elastic modulus of the soil is generally
considerably larger than the static elastic modulus, since dynamic loadings are
usually fast and cause very little deformations. In this study, the estimate of the
dynamic elastic modulus of the reinforced soil is back calculated from the p-wave
velocity in the soil based on the field test results, using the following equation
(Hunt, 1984):

s

E 1

ð 2 v Þ

v p ¼ ð 1 Þ

r 1 ð þ v Þ ð 1 2 2v Þ

Assuming typical value of Poisson's ratio (n) of 0.4 and typical soil density
(r) of 1.8 kNs 2 /m 4 (Hunt, 1984) and the measured p-wave velocity, v p , from field
approximately equal; to 300 ms -1 , the calculated E is equal to 220,000 kPa.

Table 5 Properties of Mohr-Coulomb Soil Model

k 0 x /k 0 y
(m/ms)

g dry
(kN/m 3 )

g wet
(kN/m 3 )

E ref
(kN/m 2 )

c ref
(kN/m 2 )

q
( 8 )

C
( 8 ) R inter Type

Reinforced
soil 2.2 £ 10 5 1.1 £ 10 2 5

16 20 25 35 0 Vary

2.2 £ 10 -5 1.1 £ 10 2 5 Backfill 17 20 30 38 0 Vary