Two-dimensional numerical modelling of modular-block soil retaining walls collapse using meshfree method

Abstract

Modular-block retaining wall system has been extensively used to stabilize natural and cutslope. Despite this fact, numerical development for prediction of the large deformation and flexible behavior of modular retaining wall bocks is still not advanced. To overcome this limitation, this paper presents a new numerical approach which can be used to simulate large deformation and flexible behavior of the modularblock retaining wall system. Herein, soil is modelled using an elasto-plastic constitutive model, while wall blocks are assumed rigidity with full degree of motion. A linear contact model is proposed to simulate interaction between soil and wall block. Experiments were also conducted to validate the proposed numerical framework. It is showed that the proposed numerical framework can simulate well behavior of the modularblock retaining wall system. © 2013, International Journal of GEOMATE.