Dynamic behaviour of drystone retaining walls: shaking table scaled-down tests

Abstract

In this paper, an experimental study aiming at understanding the seismic behaviour of dry stone retaining walls is presented. Harmonic shaking table tests have been carried out on scaled-down dry-joint retaining walls involving parallelepiped bricks. It is found that a thicker wall is more resistant and that a given retaining wall is less sensitive to higher frequencies. For those higher frequencies, the walls accept larger displacements before collapsing. The displacements start to occur from a given threshold, which depends on the wall geometry but not on the frequency of the base motion. The typical toppling failure is observed for slender wall and/or low frequency inputs. For less slender walls or higher frequency inputs, walls experience local sliding failures until the complete collapse of the system. The acceleration at failure reported during the dynamic tests have been compared to the corresponding pseudo-static resistance, enabling a conservative estimate of the seismic behaviour coefficient for pseudo-static analysis of this class of retaining walls. This novel experimental dataset is aimed to serve as a validating framework for future numerical or analytical tools in the field.

Dynamic Numerical Simulations of Dry-Stone Retaining Walls: Identification of the Seismic Behaviour Factor

“…The numerical strategy is validated against an existing experimental campaign [33]. The reader is referred to the original study for a detailed description, while the primary outcomes are gathered herein.…”

“…Section 3.3 uses d top to compare the experimental and numerical outcomes. In reference [33], wall failure was declared when d top exceeded 5% of the wall height H. Note that H refers to the wall height free to move throughout the shaking, disregarding the first fixed masonry course (see Figures 2 and 3).…”

“…Table 1 gathers all the parameters considered in the simulations. The material properties considered in the numerical model are either collected from the original study [33] or from numerical studies that modelled the same material [21,22] when no experimental data were available. Apart from the small layer on the top of the backfill, the cohesion C (continuum and interface) is always equal to zero (dry sand backfill and dry contact wall assembly).…”

“…Therefore, as its contribution to the current state of the art, the present work proposes a research path to characterise a relevant seismic behaviour factor r for DSRWs. It involved scaled-down dynamic experiments on DSRW mock-ups [33] to validate a numerical DEM model before simulating full-scale DSRWs. Herein, Discrete Element Modelling (DEM) is preferred to Finite Element Modelling, as large displacements are assumed to occur at interfaces between blocks [34].…”

Pseudo-Static Analytical Model For The Static And Seismic Stability Of Dry Stone Retaining Walls

“…Specific research studies regarding dry stone retaining walls (DSRWs) have been mainly conducted in Europe, with experimental [4]- [9], analytical [10]- [17] and numerical works based on the Discrete Element Method (DEM) [18]- [26]. In particular, both free-standing dry stone walls (e.g., [21]), slope retaining walls (e.g., [11]), and road retaining walls (e.g., [19]) have been studied.…”