A Displacement Based Study on Seismic Coefficient (kh) for Stiffer Wrap-Faced GRS Wall System

Geosynthetic-Reinforced Soil (GRS) retaining walls are not as new to the world as their varied applications are, their cost effectiveness and flexibility being the major interests. The aspect of flexibility can best be explored in the domain of seismic vibrations. Reinforced soil retaining structures or GRS walls have the innate ability of efficiently handling tremors by dissipation of excess energy. Hence, flexibility and stiffness are critical factors in their design which firstly demands taking consideration of safe loads and accelerations while the serviceability requirements are often ignored. Here, facets like design horizontal seismic coefficient k<inf>h</inf> for internal stability and dynamic increment of reinforcement forces are explored based on displacement criterion. So, in order to understand the behavior of reinforced soil wall, a Finite Element model of wrap-faced reinforced soil wall was developed in OpenSEES using GiD pre/post-processor. Trials were made to simulate the ground conditions into a mathematical model subjected to five different earthquakes. The study of displacement trends and force envelopes were studied. Though several aspects are yet to be unfolded, this paper attempts to solve one which is k<inf>h</inf> varying with displacement ranges, and hence takes a step forward to a more efficient earthquake resistant design of MSE wall, at least for small projects.