Response Variation of Body-Reinforced Embankments Subjected to Seismic Load

Abstract

At places where the land restrictions exist, the construction of embankments with flat side slope is an issue. During such circumstances, the embankment side slopes were steepened by providing the geosynthetic reinforcements to the embankment body. The stability of these body-reinforced embankments under static loading conditions is well explained in the literature. Though there are studies on their seismic behaviour, the analysis of these embankments supported on different foundation soils and provision of very steep slopes under seismic loading need to be studied. An attempt is made in this article to study the effect of embankment side slope and foundation soil property by performing the numerical analysis of body-reinforced embankments subjected to seismic excitations. The embankment body is reinforced with six layers of geogrid having 500 kN/m tensile stiffness with 1 m vertical spacing along the embankment elevation on both sides of the embankment slope. The crest centre accelerations, face lateral displacements and crest vertical displacements are observed. The analysis of results indicates that, though the reinforcements are provided at the side slope and not extended throughout the embankment body, the addition of reinforcement could reduce more than 80% of the lateral displacements at crest centre. The reduction of face horizontal displacements due to the inclusion of reinforcement is much effective in steep slopes than in shallow slopes. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024.