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Failure Mechanism of Two-Stage Mechanically Stabilized Earth Walls on Soft Ground

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Proceedings of the 8th International Congress on Environmental Geotechnics Volume 2 (ICEG 2018)

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Abstract

A coupled of discrete-continuum numerical model was established for the two-stage Mechanically Stabilized Earth (TS-MSE) wall on soft ground based on centrifugal test. In the numerical model, the wall and soft ground were simulated using Particle Flow Code (PFC) and Fast Lagrangian Code (FLAC), respectively. The deformations of the TS-MSE wall on soft ground were analyzed under working loading. Then, the failure mechanism of the wall was further investigated. It was found that the numerical results were in good agreement with the measured results in the centrifugal test and that the TS-MSE wall can well adapt to the soft ground under the working loading. The TS-MSE wall on the soft ground generally suffers the deep seated failure mode, and the deep seated failure surface is composed of a Rankine failure surface in the unreinforced zone and an arc failure surface in the foundation. The strength of the reinforcements was gradually reduced to investigate the internal failure mechanism of the TS-MSE wall on the soft ground, and the internal failure mechanism of the wall exhibited that the reinforcements were fractured from the bottom to the top of the wall in sequence following the failure surface in the foundation, forming a Rankine failure surface passing through the end of the connection element at the bottom layer.

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Acknowledgement

The support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grants Nos. 41072200, 41572266 and 41772289 is gratefully acknowledged.

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Correspondence to Jianfeng Chen .

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Zhang, X., Chen, J., Liu, J. (2019). Failure Mechanism of Two-Stage Mechanically Stabilized Earth Walls on Soft Ground. In: Zhan, L., Chen, Y., Bouazza, A. (eds) Proceedings of the 8th International Congress on Environmental Geotechnics Volume 2. ICEG 2018. Environmental Science and Engineering(). Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2224-2_77

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