Large deformation and post-failure simulations of segmental retaining walls using mesh-free method (SPH)

Abstract: Numerical methods are extremely useful in gaining insights into the behaviour of reinforced soil retaining walls. However, traditional numerical approaches such as limit equilibrium or finite element methods are unable to simulate large deformation and post-failure behaviour of soils and retaining wall blocks in the reinforced soil retaining walls system. To overcome this limitation, a novel numerical approach is developed aiming to predict accurately the large deformation and post-failure behaviour of soil and segmental wall blocks. Herein, soil is modelled using an elasto-plastic constitutive model, while segmental wall blocks are assumed rigid with full degrees of freedom. A soft contact model is proposed to simulate the interaction between soil-block and block-block. A two dimensional experiment of reinforced soil retaining walls collapse was conducted to verify the numerical results. It is shown that the proposed method can simulate satisfactory post-failure behaviour of segmental wall blocks in reinforced soil retaining wall systems. The comparison showed that the proposed method can provide satisfactory agreement with experiments.