Seismic internal stability of saturated reinforced soil retaining walls using the upper bound theorem of limit analysis

This study concerns the seismic internal stability analysis of saturated reinforced soil retaining walls using the discretization technique and the limit analysis upper bound approach. The discretization technique permits to generate the potential failure mechanism of reinforced structures point by point. The seismic forces are represented based on the pseudo-dynamic approach. This latter is more realistic than the pseudo-static one which is commonly used. It allows accounting for the dynamic characteristics of the seismic loading. Knowing that the water presence is the main cause of most failure cases reported in the literature, the pore water effect within the backfill soil is considered together with a possible crack opening in cohesive soils. The reinforcement strength required to prevent the saturated reinforced soil wall failure is obtained through an optimization process. The developed approach is validated by comparison with the existing results obtained by Abd and Utili (2017) using the conventional limit analysis method. The presence of pore-water pressure leads to an increase in the reinforcement strength required to prevent the failure. Discussions are then carried out to point out the effects of the crack presence, the seismic loading and the soil properties on the structure stability. The cases of non-homogeneous and layered soils are investigated.