Behavior of Reinforced Earth Retaining Wall Driving the Settlement of Reinforcement using Centrifuge Modeling

The conventional reinforced earth retaining wall has the connector system to fix the reinforcement and block. However, this system may cause the crack of block and the rupture of reinforcement due to the stress concentration near the face of reinforced earth retaining wall. In this study, the new connector system, which is able to allow the settlement of reinforcement, was applied to analyze the effect of connector system of reinforced earth retaining wall. The centrifugal tests for both the conventional reinforced earth retaining wall and reinforced earth retaining wall driving the settlement of reinforcement were performed to compare the results. As a result, reinforced earth retaining wall driving the settlement of reinforcement reached to the failure at 80g-level. In contrast, the conventional reinforced earth retaining wall was collapsed at 69g-level. It means that reinforced earth retaining wall driving the settlement of reinforcement has the stronger stability than the conventional reinforced earth retaining wall. Also, the tensile force on reinforced earth retaining wall driving the settlement of reinforcement was less at the point of 0.15H about 1/6~1/2 than that of the conventional reinforced earth retaining wall.