Investigation of the Effect of Seismic Loading on Displacements of Multi-tiered Reinforced Soil Walls in Iran Major Hydropower Projects

Reinforced Soil Wall (RSW) is one of the flexible structures that have good performance during earthquakes. Investigating the displacement behavior of RSWs in earthquake is an important issue in dynamic behavior of these structures. In this paper, one of the reinforced soil walls that are constructed in IRAN major hydropower projects is selected. These walls are modeled in Finite element method (FEM) based software, and the performance analysis in several conditions included: end of construction, statically analysis, dynamic analysis are done. In order to investigate the effect of different seismic loadings, two earthquake records of seismic loading are applied to numerical simulations. Comparing the results of seismic analysis of walls illustrates difference of seismic performance of reinforced soil wall under different seismic loadings specially in displacements of these structures.