Best way to model a slope with retaining walls in SLOPE/W

[ernesto561]

Hello everyone,

I'm checking a slope stability analysis. There are a couple of gravity retaining walls on a slope. The person who is doing the analysis says that there is no way SLOPE/W can consider retaining walls, so he uses anchors instead to model the walls. For me this does not make sense. I found this link about modelling a retaining wall in SLOPE/W: [URL unfurl="true"]http://downloads.geo-slope.com/geostudioresources/examples/7/Gravity%20retaining%20wall.pdf[/url]. For this example there are fully specified surfaces, which is not my case. At the end of the document, they say that the retaining wall can be modeled as a material with high cohesion and frictional angle. Is this the best way to do it? Could I consider modelling the material as bedrock? Thanks for your help.

 

[ernesto561]

Acording to this document ([URL unfurl="true"]http://downloads.geo-slope.com/geostudioresources/examples/8/16/SlopeW/Gravity%20retaining%20wall.pdf[/url]), there is another option in the version 8. A "high strength" soil model can be used, only the unit weight of the wall needs to be specified.

 

[GeoPaveTraffic]

The walls should not be modeled as anchors. Instead they should be included in the model with an appropriate strength, such as the "high strength material" option that you noted in your second post if they are concrete walls. If they are MSE walls, then the facing could potentially be modeled as high strength while the grids should be modeled as reinforcing lines.

Mike Lambert

 

[bdbd]

Same here. Just use c100 Ø35 with appropraite unit weight. What we are checking is not whether wall is capable of carrying the load but are there any more surface that will disturb us that goes below the wall. If you want the forces in structure, you should switch to finite element.

 

[ATSE]

See NCHRP 611 (free USgov transportation-based document, relatively comprehensive) for the GLE (Generalized Limit Equilibrium) method to back calculate earth pressures on the back of walls. They use SLIDE in their example, but I imagine Slope/W has similar features. Not quite as easy as they make it look, but it works.