• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2004.03b
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• pp.380-387
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• 2004

Recently the geosynthetics reinforced retaining wall has been widely used instead of the steel reinforced retaining wall. The geosynthetics reinforced retaining wall is a very dangerous structure if the geosynthetics lose their strength about tension or if it lose their pullout resistence, but it was known that the geosynthetics reinforced wall had a great resistence and was a very safe structure against a earthquake or a dynamic load. It can be said that most important factors in the stability of the geosynthetics reinforced wall are the horizontal length of reinforcement and the vertical distance between two reinforcements. That is to say, as the length of reinforcement is longer, the structure is more stable and as the vertical distance between two reinforcements is shorter, it is more stable. In this study, in order to get the critical condition with a safety rate of 1, various kinds of model tests about geosynthetics reinforced wall has been performed. Photos by B-shutter method has been taken during tests and from photos, which show us the failure state, the critical condition about failure has been conformed. Accordingly the equation, which says the limit of stability in geosynthetics reinforced wall., has been proposed.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.3-15
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• 2004

Geogrid reinforced soil structures with segmental block facing have been increased since 1990's, because of the convenience of installation and the flexible appearance. In this paper, the behavior of the segmental reinforced retaining wall was analysed with the results of field monitoring. The height and length of reinforced wall are 12m and 25m, respectively. The field measurement equipments are horizontal and vertical earth pressure cells, settlement plate, strain gauge, inclinometer, and displacement pin. Based on the field monitoring, the horizontal earth pressure was approximately 0.3times higher than that of the theoretical method and the maximum tensile strength of reinforcement was 26.2kN/m. The displacement of facing wall was 23mm at the point of 7.1m height of the wall and toward the wall facing. The results of the study indicate that the segmental reinforced retaining wall is in a stable condition because of good compaction & reinforcement effects, and long period of construction time. Finally, the computer program of SRWall is very useful tool to design the segmental reinforced retaining wall.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.43-51
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• 2012

This paper describes the stability evaluation of reinforced earth wall using geosynthetic strip based on field test. The wall facing, which is applied in field, is able to present excellent scenery, and the reinforcement has improvement effect of pullout resistance based on rounded band anchor. The measurement is conducted according to construction elapsed time of structure for earth pressure, horizontal displacement of wall facing and reinforcement strain in field test. The evaluation results show that the measured earth pressure is less than theoretical earth pressure due to dispersion effect of earth pressure by geosynthetic strip. The horizontal displacement of wall facing is also satisfied a empirical criteria. The measured strain of reinforcement had nearly no effect on stability of the reinforced earth wall. Therefore, the geosynthetic strip with rounded band anchor can be applied in the reinforced earth wall, and the reinforced earth wall with geosynthetic strip can be commonly used in field because it has a structural stability.

• Magazine of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.303-311
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• 1998

Ten reinforced concrete rigid frames and infilled shear wall frames were tested under both vertical and cyclic loadings. Experiments were carried out to evaluate the structural performance of such test specimens, such as the hysteretic behavior, the maximum horizontal strength, crack propagation, and ductility etc. under load reversals. All the specimens were modeledin one-third scale size. Based on the test results reported in this study, the follwing conclusions can be made. For the rigid frame type and the fully rigid babel type shear wall specimens, the hysteresis diagrams indicate that the degradations of their strength were developed slowly beyond maximum carrying capacity. It was shown that when the hoop reinforcement ratio became higher, the energy dissipation capacity became larger and the failure mode became ductile. The specimens designed by the less hoop reinforcement for the fully rigid babel type shear wall, were mainly failed due to diagonal crack in comparison with the specimens designed by the larger hoop reinforcement ratio. Maximum horizontal resisting moment capacity of speciment designed by the fully rigid babel shear wall were increased by 5.47~7.95 times in comparison with the rigid frame type.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.291-321
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• 2011

The paper describes a simple numerical FLAC model that was developed to simulate the dynamic response of two instrumented reduced-scale model reinforced soil walls constructed on a 1-g shaking table. The models were 1 m high by 1.4 m wide by 2.4 m long and were constructed with a uniform size sand backfill, a polymeric geogrid reinforcement material with appropriately scaled stiffness, and a structural full-height rigid panel facing. The wall toe was constructed to simulate a perfectly hinged toe (i.e. toe allowed to rotate only) in one model and an idealized sliding toe (i.e. toe allowed to rotate and slide horizontally) in the other. Physical and numerical models were subjected to the same stepped amplitude sinusoidal base acceleration record. The material properties of the component materials (e.g. backfill and reinforcement) were determined from independent laboratory testing (reinforcement) and by back-fitting results of a numerical FLAC model for direct shear box testing to the corresponding physical test results. A simple elastic-plastic model with Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion for the sand was judged to give satisfactory agreement with measured wall results. The numerical results are also compared to closed-form solutions for reinforcement loads. In most cases predicted and closed-form solutions fall within the accuracy of measured loads based on ${\pm}1$ standard deviation applied to physical measurements. The paper summarizes important lessons learned and implications to the seismic design and performance of geosynthetic reinforced soil walls.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.761-778
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• 2015

The objective of this paper is to report the result of an experimental program conducted on the strengthening of nonductile RC frames by using external mesh reinforcement and plaster application. The main objective was to test an alternative strengthening technique for reinforced concrete buildings, which could be applied with minimum disturbance to the occupants. Generic specimen is two floors and one bay RC frame in 1/2 scales. The basic aim of tested strengthening techniques is to upgrade strength, ductility and stiffness of the member and/or the structural system. Six specimens, two of which were reference specimens and the remaining four of which had deficient steel detailing and poor concrete quality were strengthened and tested in an experimental program under cyclic loading. The parameters of the experimental study are mesh reinforcement ratio and plaster thickness of the infilled wall. The effects of the mesh reinforced plaster application for strengthening on behavior, strength, stiffness, failure mode and ductility of the specimens were investigated. Premature and unexpected failure mode has been observed at first and second specimens failed due to inadequate plaster thickness. Also third strengthened specimen failed due to inadequate lap splice of the external mesh reinforcement. The last modified specimen behaved satisfactorily with higher ultimate load carrying capacity. Externally reinforced infill wall composites improve seismic behavior by increasing lateral strength, lateral stiffness, and energy dissipation capacity of reinforced concrete buildings, and limit both structural and nonstructural damages caused by earthquakes.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.41-47
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• 2008

This paper describes the results of model experiments in the laboratory, which were conducted to assess the behavior characteristics of geosynthetic reinforced soil walls according to different surcharge loads and reinforcement types. The model walls were built in the box having dimension, 100 cm tall, 140 cm long, and 100cm wide. Three types of geosynthetics, geonet, geogrid A and geogrid B, are used as the reinforcements. Decomposed granite soil (SM) was used as a backfill material. Seven model walls are constructed and tested. After the construction of the model wall, the LVDTs are installed to obtain the displacements of the wall face. As the results of the model tests, the maximum horizontal displacements of the model walls occurred due to uniform surcharge pressure were measured at the 0.7H from the bottom of the wall. The more the reinforcement strength increases, the more the wall displacements decrease, and also the reduction ratio of the wall displacement decrease with increasing the surcharge pressure.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.21-29
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• 2005

This paper presents the results of a numerical investigation on the behavior of a geosynthetic reinforced two-tier segmental retaining wall (GR-SRW) on a yielding foundation. A hypothetical 10 m high two tier GR-SRW to be constructed on an incompetent foundation containing a layer of relative soft soil deposit was considered. A verified finite-element procedure was employed to get insights into the effect of foundation yielding on the wall behavior including the wall deformation and the reinforcement load. It is shown that the effect of foundation yielding is to increase the wall deformation as well as the reinforcement load, thus influencing both the internal as well as the external stability of the wall. Practical implications of the findings obtained from this study are highlighted in this paper.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.39-48
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• 2007

This paper introduces a recently developed reinforced earth wall system with steel framed-facing. The new system incorporates a steel-framed facing that might be assembled on-site and steel strip or geogrid type reinforcements for backfill area. In order to enhance scenery view design of the wall construction, dual-structured facing is proposed in which room for planting space locates in the front of facing. A reinforced earth walls using the proposed system was constructed to verify constructability of the proposed system and facing movement and tensile characteristics of reinforcement were measured to understand the mechanical behavior.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.843-859
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• 2014

In the present study, the seismic performance of structural walls with boundary elements confined by conventional tie hoops and steel fiber concrete (SFC) was investigated. Cyclic lateral loading tests on four wall specimens under constant axial load were performed. The primary test parameters considered were the spacing of boundary element transverse reinforcement and the use of steel fiber concrete. Test results showed that the wall specimen with boundary elements complying with ACI 318-11 21.9.6 failed at a high drift ratio of 4.5% due to concrete crushing and re-bar buckling. For the specimens where SFC was selectively used in the plastic hinge region, the spalling and crushing of concrete were substantially alleviated. However, sliding shear failure occurred at the interface of SFC and plain concrete at a moderate drift ratio of 3.0% as tensile plastic strains of longitudinal bars were accumulated during cyclic loading. The behaviors of wall specimens were examined through nonlinear section analysis adopting the stress-strain relationships of confined concrete and SFC.