Shaking table tests on seismic stability of reinforced abutment

The 1995 Hyogoken-Nanbu Earthquake caused serious damage to conventional type abutments for railways. They suffered large relative settlements between the abutment and the backfill, while even a small relative settlement would have endangered safe operation of train running. In this study, a series of shaking table tests on reinforced abutments were carried out in order to develop a new type abutment which can resist satisfactorily against a high intensity of input motion such as Level 2 earthquake. The proposed types of abutment in this study are a) reinforced abutment with cement-treated backfill, b) reinforced small abutment resting on cement treated and reinforced backfill, and c) preloaded and prestressed (PLPS) reinforced backfill with a retchet system. The experiments revealed that the seismic stability of these abutments are much higher than conventional type abutments and they maintained sufficient stability against a very high intensity of input motion.