Alternative Title
Paper No. SOA-4
Location
St. Louis, Missouri
Date
08 Mar 1998 - 15 Mar 1998
Abstract
An overview is presented on seismic performance of rigid and flexible retaining walls based on case histories during earthquakes, notably from the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Three critical issues are discussed out of these case histories: (l) If the effects of an earthquake motion are approximated in terms of a pseudo-static inertia force using the Mononobe-Okabe equation, the equivalent seismic coefficient for evaluating gross stability of retaining walls should be less than 100 %, about 60 % on average, of a peak ground acceleration specified as a fraction of gravity (amax/g); (2) Liquefaction or excess pore water pressure increase in the subsoil seriously affects the retaining walls at waterfront, often resulting in excessively large displacements. Collapse of the wall, however, is rare. More attention should be directed toward identifying the mode and mechanism of displacements/failure of the retaining walls at the waterfront; (3) The order of the displacements of the walls at waterfront, ranging from 5 to 50% of the wall height, are summarized in a tentative list, classified by the structural type of walls, the level of earthquake shaking, and the extent of liquefaction.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
4th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
University of Missouri--Rolla
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 1998 University of Missouri--Rolla, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Lai, Susumu, "Rigid and Flexible Retaining Walls During Kobe Earthquake" (1998). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 10.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/4icchge/4icchge-session00/10
Rigid and Flexible Retaining Walls During Kobe Earthquake
St. Louis, Missouri
An overview is presented on seismic performance of rigid and flexible retaining walls based on case histories during earthquakes, notably from the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Three critical issues are discussed out of these case histories: (l) If the effects of an earthquake motion are approximated in terms of a pseudo-static inertia force using the Mononobe-Okabe equation, the equivalent seismic coefficient for evaluating gross stability of retaining walls should be less than 100 %, about 60 % on average, of a peak ground acceleration specified as a fraction of gravity (amax/g); (2) Liquefaction or excess pore water pressure increase in the subsoil seriously affects the retaining walls at waterfront, often resulting in excessively large displacements. Collapse of the wall, however, is rare. More attention should be directed toward identifying the mode and mechanism of displacements/failure of the retaining walls at the waterfront; (3) The order of the displacements of the walls at waterfront, ranging from 5 to 50% of the wall height, are summarized in a tentative list, classified by the structural type of walls, the level of earthquake shaking, and the extent of liquefaction.
