Numerical investigation of the interaction of back-to-back MSE walls

¹ Ph.D. Candidate, School of Civil Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei, 430072, China; Visiting PhD Student, GeoEngineering Centre at Queen’s-RMC, Canada
² Professor, School of Civil Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei 430072, China

^* Corresponding author: yzheng@whu.edu.cn

Abstract

The behaviour of back-to-back MSE walls is significantly influenced by the geometry, especially for the horizontal distance (D) between the back of the reinforced soil zone of the two MSE walls or the width-to-height ratio (R_WH) of the system. In the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) design guidelines ^[1] (Berg et al. 2009), two cases are considered based on the horizontal distance of the two MSE walls. However, no justification is provided for this assumption. Therefore, research is needed to investigate the interaction of back-to-back MSE walls with different horizontal distances. In addition, previous studies generally indicate that ignoring the interaction effect between the back-to-back MSE walls would result in overestimation for the design; however, no quantitative evaluation is provided regarding the interaction of back-to-back MSE walls ^[2-4]. This paper presents a numerical study of the interaction analysis of the static behaviour of back-to-back MSE walls. A parametric study is conducted to investigate the effect of horizontal distance (width-to-height ratio) on lateral soil thrust and required tensile strength. Results from this investigation provide insights on the interaction of back-to-back MSE walls.