Experimental Investigation of Dynamic Behaviour of Retaining Wall

The civil engineering infrastructures such as building, retaining wall, bridge, abutments may be vulnerable to catastrophic failure during earthquake. Earthquake has caused permanent deformation of these retaining structures. Post-earthquake surveys have revealed that many retaining walls suffered damage due to large displacement. The displacement of retaining wall becomes another important consideration in earthquake prone areas as retaining walls have been observed to fail by displacement away from the backfill. The knowledge of behaviour of this retaining wall under dynamic loading plays a very important role in the design of retaining walls in earthquake prone region. Studies related to the behaviour of any model under seismic excitation can be categorized through carrying out model test, use of analytical/numerical model to simulate ground behaviour and application of the above concept in the field behaviour. Shaking table have the advantages of well controlled large amplitude, different axis input motion, easier experimental measurements to validate the numerical result. Many Researchers have investigated about the stability of the retaining wall under dynamic condition by computing dynamic earth pressure based on pseudostatic and pseudo dynamic approaches Choudhury (2006). In this study an attempt has been made to investigate the behaviour of retaining wall under static and dynamic condition. Layers of polystyrene sheets are placed between the wall and the backfill soil and its effect is studied. The physical test results are compared with the numerical model which is developed using Finite Difference based Program FLAC.