Abstract:
Due to the development of materials and enhancement in technical understanding of
geotechnical engineering, different types of soil retention systems have evolved over the
last three to four decades. These systems may be classified into two groups; externally
stabilized walls and internally stabilized walls. The internally stabilized walls comprise of
horizontally laid reinforcements which carry most or all of the lateral earth pressure via
soil-reinforcement interaction or via passive resistance from the anchor block.
In this thesis analysis of an anchored earth retaining wall is undertaken using a threedimensional
explicit finite difference program. To generate the model Mohr-Coulomb
constitutive model is used in this study. The parameters studied are (1) vertical cable
spacing (2) fill soil property (3) cable diameter and (4) horizontal cable spacing.
Emphasis is placed to investigate the variation of (I) mid section deflection of the wall
and (2) stress in the cable at different levels with the above mentioned parameters. A
6.6m high vertically faced anchored earth wall is modeled by using a finite difference
program called FLAC3D. The wall is comprised of alluvial sandy soil as reinforced soil
(Poisson's ratio 0.15), reinforcement and retained soil (same as reinforced soil). No
facing element and anchor plate is used for simplicity ofthe model.
From the analysis it can be concluded that deflection of the wall front decreases with a
decrease in the vertical cable spacing and near the base of the wall deformation is zero.
On the other hand stress in the cable decreases with a decrease in the cable spacing due to
smaller contributing area to a cable strip and maximum stress occur at about 60 percent
length of the cable from the wall. Variation of shear strength of soil reveals that as the
shear strength is increased deflection of wall front as well as the stress of the cable
decreases. The parametric study of horizontal spacing of cable ended with the findings
that wall front deflection and cable stress increases with the increase of horizontal
spacing. It can also be said that cable stresses increases and deflection of the wall front
decreases with the increase of cable diameter. Finally it can be concluded from above
study that Finite Difference method may successfully simulate the behavior of anchored
earth system.
