Performance of reinforced soil walls during the 2011 Tohoku earthquake

Abstract

The 2011 Tohoku earthquake off the Pacific coast of Japan (M w ¼ 9.0) contained a huge source region of approximately 450 km by 200 km and caused extensive damage to various structures. Damage caused by the tsunami was tremendous and many lives were lost. In addition to the damage to concrete structures, seawalls were seriously damaged, probably as a result of scouring. On the other hand, some reinforced soil walls were barely damaged, although they were inundated by the tsunami. This paper briefly reviews the reinforced soil walls in Japan and then summarises the seismic performances of approximately 1600 walls in the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. It also reports some case histories for the reinforced soil walls that were subjected to the direct impact of the earthquake (shaking) and the tsunami. Although seismic motion was much higher than the design value for a wide area and the impact of the tsunami was not considered in the design, fewer than 1% of the walls were seriously damaged and more than 90% showed no damage. However, some damage was found at the backfill and facing panels where the soil was not properly covered and protected against erosion by the tsunami.

Influence of transient flooding on steel strip reinforced soil walls

“…1. In this example and in most other documented cases, reinforced soil wall structures behaved well even though these The Japanese Geotechnical Society www.sciencedirect.com journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/sandf structures were not designed for transient flooding (Kuwano et al, 2014).…”

Mitigation of Disasters by Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Rains by Means of Geosynthetic-Reinforced Soil Retaining Walls and Embankments

“…Good performance of GRS walls in general and some exceptional cases exhibiting poor performance during the March 11, 2011 earthquake which hit the eastern part of main island, Japan have been documented in several literatures, including [9][10][11][12]. Some of the typical case histories investigated by the first author will be herein introduced briefly.…”

Effects of Overburden on Behavior of Confined-Reinforced Earth under Different Settlement

“…Consequently, vehicles cannot pass the unevenness created by the earthquake. Geosynthetic reinforced soil has been widely used to mitigate such damage from earthquakes because of its high seismic resistance (Tatsuoka et al 4) , 1998; Koseki 5) , 2012; Kuwano et al 6) , 2014). Moreover, reinforced-soil structure was used to reduce differential settlement effectively (Monley and Wu 7) , 1993; Poorooshasb 8) , 2002).…”