Study On Seismic Performance Of Back-to-back Geosynthetic-reinforced Soil(GRS) Road Embankments With Different Cross-sections

China is a country with a wide distribution of seismic zones and frequent earthquakes.Along with the implementation of a series of strategies such as the National Belt and Road Initiative and the Western Development,China’s road construction momentum remains strong.Because the Back-to-back Geosynthetic-Reinforced Soil(GRS)road embankment is a flexible structure,it has the advantages of low cost,small footprint,beautiful appearance,and excellent seismic performance.This type of structure is more and more widely used in road construction projects.However,there are few studies on Back-to-back GRS road embankments at home and abroad,and most of them only focus on their static mechanical behavior.Therefore,it is of great engineering and theoretical value to study the dynamic response characteristics of Back-to-back GRS road embankments under earthquake.Based on the researches made by pioneers,the finite element software PLAXIS was used in this paper to analyze the response characteristics of Back-to-back GRS road embankments with different cross-sections(inclined and tiered)subjected to earthquakes.The main contents include the following four parts:The first part introduces the development history of reinforced earth structure and the current research status of Mechanically Stabilized Earth(MSE)walls,and then summarizes the composition,failure mode and design method of Back-to-back GRS road embankments.In the second part,the finite element software PLAXIS was used to analyze the response characteristics of Back-to-back GRS road embankments with different crosssections(inclined and tiered)under different kinds of earthquakes.The road surface settlement,lateral displacement of the embankment,maximum tensile force of the reinforcements under different inclination angles,different step widths,different retaining wall spacings,different reinforcement patterns and different design accelerations were studied.The third part is based on the content of the second part.The correlation between the maximum tensile force of the Back-to-back GRS road embankments reinforcement material and the various ground motion strength parameters under different earthquakes was analyzed.And the relationship between the maximum tensile force of the Back-to-back GRS road embankments(inclined and tiered)and the parameters of the seismic intensity,the main frequency of the earthquake,and the main frequency of the structure were established.The fourth part is based on the highway project from Kashi to Yecheng to Moyu,using the finite element software PLAXIS to analyze the performance of the Back-to-back GRS road embankments in the project under the action of different design earthquakes.The seismic performance of the structure was evaluated.