Geosynthetic-reinforced soil wall failure encountered in reduced scale shaking table testing

An extreme case of model geosynthetic-reinforced soil wall failure encountered during shaking table testing is described in this paper. A 1/4 scale, 2 m high model wall with concrete block facing and geotextile reinforcement length of 85 cm was brought to collapse under dynamic loading in which the maximum shaking table acceleration reached 2g. Failure started with the upper facing blocks falling and continued with overturning of the wall face. The test was terminated before the wall fully collapsed. In this paper, the failure mechanism is investigated and the performance of the model is compared to that predicted by design recommendations. The stiffness of geotextile layers and the silt content of the fill are suggested as the reason for the good performance up to such large dynamic loads.