Location
Arlington, Virginia
Date
16 Aug 2008, 8:45am - 12:30pm
Abstract
Niigata Prefecture of Japan was hit by two large earthquakes in recent years 2004 and 2007. In particular during the 2004 Earthquake, large number of retaining walls which had supported road embankments in the mountainous area collapsed, resulting in cutting off road traffic and complete isolation of people in the neighborhood for a long time. An extensive investigation of a number of damaged and undamaged road embankments in the mountainous area revealed that catastrophic failure of embankments constructed on sloping foundation soils were in many cases triggered by the damage of retaining walls and most of such damaged retaining walls failed in the mechanism of the bearing capacity failure of the foundation soil. In this study, laboratory tests on undisturbed sample obtained from the sites are conducted to identify strength profiles of foundation soils. A simple, pseudo static method, to examine the seismic stability of existing retaining walls was developed, which evaluates a factor of safety for the bearing capacity failure of foundation on slope under combined loading. It was found that the factor of safety is an excellent index to sort out severely damaged walls from practically non-damaged walls. A practical method using in-situ portable dynamic cone penetration test is also proposed.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
6th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 2008 Missouri University of Science and Technology, 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
Okamura, Mitsu and Shigematsu, Shinya, "Damage to Masonry Retaining Walls During Niigataken-Chuetsu Earthquake" (2008). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 3.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/6icchge/session03/3
Damage to Masonry Retaining Walls During Niigataken-Chuetsu Earthquake
Arlington, Virginia
Niigata Prefecture of Japan was hit by two large earthquakes in recent years 2004 and 2007. In particular during the 2004 Earthquake, large number of retaining walls which had supported road embankments in the mountainous area collapsed, resulting in cutting off road traffic and complete isolation of people in the neighborhood for a long time. An extensive investigation of a number of damaged and undamaged road embankments in the mountainous area revealed that catastrophic failure of embankments constructed on sloping foundation soils were in many cases triggered by the damage of retaining walls and most of such damaged retaining walls failed in the mechanism of the bearing capacity failure of the foundation soil. In this study, laboratory tests on undisturbed sample obtained from the sites are conducted to identify strength profiles of foundation soils. A simple, pseudo static method, to examine the seismic stability of existing retaining walls was developed, which evaluates a factor of safety for the bearing capacity failure of foundation on slope under combined loading. It was found that the factor of safety is an excellent index to sort out severely damaged walls from practically non-damaged walls. A practical method using in-situ portable dynamic cone penetration test is also proposed.
