Proceedings of Engineering and Technology Innovation, vol. 15, 2020, pp. 24 - 34 Effect of Acceleration on Wrap Faced Reinforced Soil Retaining Wall on Soft Clay by Performing Shaking Table Test Ripon Hore 1,* , Sudipta Chakraborty 2 , Ayaz Mahmud Shuvon 2 , Mehedi Ahmed Ansary 1 1 Department of Civil Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh 2 Bangladesh Network Office for Urban Safety (BNUS), Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh Received 21 June 2019; received in revised form 03 October 2019; accepted 03 January 2020 DOI: https://doi.org/10.46604/peti.2020.4485 Abstract This research incorporates shaking table testing of scale wrap faced soil wall models to evaluate the seismic response of embankment. Currently the seismic designs of highway or railway embankment rely on little or no empirical data for calibrating numerical simulations. This research is working towards filling that empirical data gap. The specific purpose of the study was to evaluate the seismic response of constructed embankment model regarding the different input base accelerations with fixed frequency. A series of one-dimensional (1D) shaking table tests (0.05g, 0.1g, 0.15g and 0.2g), were performed on a 0.4 meters high wrap faced reinforced-soil wall model. Additionally, it was placed over 0.3 meters high soft clayey foundation. Predominantly, the influence of the base acceleration on the seismic response was studied in this paper. The physical models were subjected to harmonic sinusoidal input motions at a fixed frequency of 1 Hz, in order to assess the seismic behavior. The effects of parameters such as acceleration amplitudes and surcharge pressures on the seismic response of the model walls were considered. The relative density of the backfill material was kept fixed at 60%. The results of this study reveal that input accelerations and surcharge load had significant influence on the model wall, pore water pressure, and changes along the elevation. Acceleration response advances with the increase in base acceleration, so the difference being more perceptible at higher elevations. The pore water pressures were found to be high for high base shaking and low surcharge pressures at higher elevations. The results obtained from this study are helpful in understanding the relative performance of reinforced soil retaining wall under different test conditions resting on soft clay. Keywords: reinforced embankment, soft clayey soil foundation, input acceleration, sinusoidal input motions, input frequency, surcharge load, pore water pressure, shaking table test 1. Introduction Highways are essential lifelines that should be in operation even after disastrous events. For that reason, during and after earthquakes, earth structures such as highway embankments should be stable enough to provide required safety and emergency needs. The soil-foundation composed of clayey soil has become the focus of earthquake engineering in more cases. However, it is challenging to study the characteristic of pore water pressure in such a clayey soil-foundations under an earthquake action. Although such a soil-foundations of higher clay content, a rise of excess pore water pressure triggered by earthquakes and a drop of effective stress may lead to the soil softening. Moreover, soil-foundation softening may cause damage to the embankment. Thus, engineering judgment and application are required to reinforce the embankment to acquire the stability conditions. Geosynthetics have proven to be useful and cost-effective site improvement materials. They have become essential materials in civil engineering and environmental geotechnics. Application of the geosynthetics in highway embankments provides an additional tensile strength and durability to the structures under horizontal and vertical loads, so it enables engineers to construct more stable and earthquake resistant highway embankments [1-2]. The researches in geotechnical * Corresponding author. E-mail address: riponhore@gmail.com Tel.: +88-02-8181162; Fax: +88-02-9136751