Reduced scale shaking table tests on Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil Retaining Walls

Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil Retaining Walls offer cost-efficiency, higher performance, aesthetic appearance and much more durability. To help improve the inadequacies of the current seismic design methods and to gain a better insight into dynamic behavior of Geosynthetic-Reinforced Soil Retaining walls under earthquake loads, additional numerical and experimental tests must be adopted. In order to gain a better insight into dynamic behavior of Geosynthetic-Reinforced Soil Retaining walls, a series of reduced-scale (1/2 and 1/4) Geotextile Reinforced Soil Retaining Wall models were tested using the shaking table facility at the Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute (KOERI) of Bogazici University, Turkey. Linear displacement transducers were used to measure the strains of the geotextile reinforcements and laser displacement sensors were used to measure the displacements of the facing blocks which constitute the front wall of the retaining structure. Accelerometers were placed onto several locations of the soil structure to evaluate the acceleration amplifications that occurred. Preliminary results obtained from these tests show that the walls survived the El-Centro earthquake record with nearly no permanent displacements. The findings from the two models were observed to be consistent.