Seismic Performance of Geotextile-Reinforced Soil Retaining Walls

By the 1995 Hyogoken-Nambu Earthquake, a number of permanent important engineering structures were seriously damaged including the retaining walls (RWs). A number of conventional type masonry and gravity-type RWs was particularly serious damaged. The geotextile-reinforced soil RWs that had been constructed for a total length of about 2km behaved very well. A geotextile geotextile-reinforced soil RWs located in one of the most severely shaken areas was deformed only slightly. This paper describes the seismic performance of the geotextile-reinforced soil RWs, its back analysis, and an outline of a new design method against high seismic loads.