Centrifuge Modeling of Seismic Performance of Reinforced Earth Structures - Reinforced Soil Engineering: Advances in Research and Practice - page 406

21
Centrifuge Modeling of Seismic
Performance of Reinforced Earth
Structures
Jiro Takemura
Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand
Akihiro Takahashi
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan
1 INTRODUCTION
Centrifuge model testing has been widely recognized as one of the most versatile
research tools in geotechnical engineering. This physical modeling technique
shows its advantage in simulating behavior of soil structures in which the self-
weight of soils plays important roles. For examples, stress-strain relationships of
soils normally have a strong stress dependency and shear stresses in the soil
structures are mainly caused by the weight of soils, especially for slopes,
excavations, and retaining structures. In addition to these advantages, as small-
scale model tests, the centrifuge model tests can be carried out relatively easier
than the large-scale gravity models, so that the centrifuge model tests can provide
very useful information, such as failure and deformation mechanisms and earth
pressures acting on the structures, which are sometimes crucial in design models,
for many conditions we must consider.
Because of these features, centrifuge model testing has been applied in the
research on the performance of reinforced earth structures from the early era of
earth reinforcement. Bolton and Pang (1982) conducted more then 70 centrifuge