| Retaining wall systems are widely used throughout seismically active areas like California. They represent key elements of important constructed facilities and their potential damage is connected with significant physical and economic consequences. While their design for static applications has been practiced by many sectors, their seismic design has not been extensively developed with a lack of accurate guidelines in the excisting design codes.;The current study aims at the investigation of the dynamic response of freeway retaining walls that are used in highways of California and have been designed based on the existing Caltrans specifications and tools. The seismic response of those walls is a very complex phenomenon as it depends on the soil-retaining wall-earthquake interaction. The response becomes even more complex with the addition of a sound wall at the top of the retaining wall.The development of rigorous numerical models in order to capture the dynamic response of the wall as well as the factors that contribute to the failure of the sound wall is the main objective of this work.;First, one set of numerical models was developed in order to validate a full scale test on two retaining walls designed according to Caltrans specifications and secondly, another set of models was developed in order to analyze parametrically the effect of the triad soil-retaining wall-earthquake to the system and contribution of sound wall. Main observation from the results of the analysis is that the dynamic response of such a retaining system is the combined result of many factors such as the predominant frequency of the excitation and the eigenfrequency of the structure. |
