Review of Current Design Practice for Soil-Reinforced Segmental Retaining Walls

보강토 옹벽의 설계 현황에 대한 고찰

Segmental retaining wall market in Korea has been growing dramatically since late 1990s in both engineered and non-engineered applications. Despite the inherent conservatism in the current design approaches, numerous major and minor structural problems have been reported during and after construction, covering a range of minor structural damage to total collapse. Much still needs to be investigated to fill the gap between the theory and the practice. This paper reviews several design issues with regard to the segmental retaining walls such as the selection of shear strength parameters for backfill soil, local stability, and tiered wall construction. In addition, the effects of shear strength parameters and the fundamental behavior of tiered SRWs are examined based on the results of finite element analysis. Implications of the findings from this study to current design practices were discussed in detail.