INVESTIGATION OF THE SEISMIC PERFORMANCE OF REINFORCED HIGHWAY EMBANKMENTS

Abstract:

Despite the fact that highway embankments are highly prone to earthquake induced damage, there are not enough studies in the literature concentrated on improving the seismic performance of highway embankments.

Embankments which are quite stable under static load conditions can simply collapse during earthquakes due to the destructive seismic loading. This situation poses a high sequence thread to the structural integrity of the embankment, service quality and serviceability.

The objective of this study is to determine the effect of the geosynthetic reinforcement on the seismic performance of the highway embankments and evaluate the seismic performance of the geotextile reinforced embankment under different earthquake motions. A 1:50 scale highway embankment model is designed and reinforced with geosynthetics in order to increase the seismic performance of the embankment model. A series of shaking table tests were performed for the identical unreinforced and reinforced embankment models using earthquake excitations with different characteristics. The experimental results were evaluated comparing the unreinforced and reinforced cases. Results revealed that reinforced embankment models perform better seismic performance especially under specificied ground excitations used in this study. Also, the prototype embankment was numerically modelled. It is seen that similar seismic behavior trend is obtained in the finite element simulations.