MSE walls

[geohec]

Hello to all geofreeks,

Simple question, to analyze the amount of displacement an embankment can withstand during an earthquake, could a MSE wall be considered as an embamkment to use Maksidi and Seed (1977, 1978) displacement calculation method.

Also, what will you recommend to perform a site-spefific earthquake evaluation , is SHAKE available for free.

Thanks

 

[dgillette]

If the yield acceleration is governed by shear through the geotextile or other reinforcement, or if accelerations within the range of possibility would tear or break the reinforcement, no. Once the reinforcement goes, its strength is not available so yield acceleration becomes much smaller, possibly zero or less. This is different from soil, which retains a lot of its strength after yield. Otherwise, it might be reasonable, although the dynamic response of a "cliff" is different from that of a roughly triangular embankment. The complete M-S method includes a response analysis of a triangle based on a Bessel series or something like that. I don't know if that part is in the journal paper. Off the top of my head, I don't know what I would do about the response analysis.

DRG