Dynamic behavior of reinforced walls – Horizontal displacement response

A series of uni-axial shaking table tests using step-wise intensified sinusoidal waves is performed on plane-strain geosynthetic-reinforced slopes to investigate the effects of wave frequency and amplitude to the seismic displacements of geosynthetic-reinforced slopes. The geosynthetic-reinforced model slope is backfill with uniform steel rods with a known Coulomb friction angle. A comparative study on the normalized slope displacement based on Newmark’s sliding-block theory shows that the normalized displacement curves obtained here fall to the right of analytical and empirical curves reported in the literature, suggesting that a plastic displacement of the slope prior to the yielding of the slope has been ignored in conventional displacement evaluation for geosynthetic-reinforced slopes. Furthermore, no amplified acceleration response at the crest of the slope was found for the post-yield geosynthetic-reinforced slopes subjected to a relatively intensive input base acceleration of 0.4–0.6 g, or subjected to a maximum wall displacement greater than 1.9–3.9% of the wall height.