Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Innovative Infrastructure Solutions (2020) 5:42 https://doi.org/10.1007/s41062-020-00295-x TECHNICAL PAPER Dynamic response of wrap‑faced cement treated reinforced clayey soil retaining walls Bisrat Gissila Gidday 1  · Satyendra Mittal 1 Received: 24 February 2020 / Accepted: 16 April 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Abstract This paper presents model studies conducted on geotextile wrap faced reinforced soil walls under dynamic conditions mounted on a shake table. Untreated and cement-treated clay soils were used as backfll soils. Numerical modeling has been done by PLAXIS software. The surcharge pressure, frequency of shaking, base acceleration, and a diferent number of reinforcement layers were varied in model tests. The infuence of these various parameters at diferent elevations of the retaining wall, settlement at the crest, and horizontal face displacement are presented in this paper. All model walls were subjected to 20 cycles of sinusoidal shaking, and the slope was kept at 45°. It was seen that vertical crest settlement and horizontal displacement of reinforced soil wall decrease with an increase in reinforcing layers. Keywords Geosynthetics · Reinforced soils · Shake table test · Numerical modeling · Cement Introduction Reinforced soil technology has acquired broad recogni- tion due to its constructional, functional, and cost-efective benefts for constructing walls even in less space [1]. The usage of this technology for soil retaining structures has increased enormously in infrastructural projects across the world. Retaining walls are amongst the earliest geotechnical structure since civilization. Depending upon the purpose of the project, these walls can be permanent or temporary [2]. Various researchers have done work on laboratory models of reinforced soil walls under diferent conditions [3, 4], and at the same time, various feld studies have been done by dif- ferent investigators [5–7]. Some work [8] has been done to examine the behavior of the reinforced soil wall subjected to overburden pressure and seismic loads with backfll as cement treated. The facing element in this wall was geotex- tile. One of the signifcant outcomes of this work was that the cement-treated backfll soil could provide more stability to such walls, even during earthquakes. The evaluations of forecasted stability analyses with measured and investigated results of model reinforced soil walls using theoretical design techniques [9]. Centrifuge tests performed on model walls 0.15 m high using 0.3 g acceleration, which corresponds to a 4.5 m high prototype wall, with lightweight, rigid facing and geotextile reinforce- ment have been done by diferent investigators [10, 11]. The deformations decreased with decreasing face slope angle, increasing density and reinforcement stifness were observed on retaining wall models of 1.0 to 1.8 m high with inclined slopes and vertical at one-seventh scales [12]. Some of the researches have also been done on rein- forced soil structure based on numerical modeling [13–15] to study the behavior of such walls under static and dynamic conditions. The wraparound walls are built by folding an extended reinforcing component (geogrid and geotextile) through 180° [16] to form the facing and fxing it back into the fll (Fig. 1). The present paper is based on physical mod- eling, and numerical analysis, in which studies are made to investigate the reduction in settlement and horizontal face displacement of a wrap faced reinforced soil retaining wall with untreated, and cement treated clay soil backfll. * Bisrat Gissila Gidday bisratgissila@gmail.com Satyendra Mittal satyendramittal@gmail.com 1 Civil Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, India