Comparison of current method for internal stability design of Mechanical Stabilized Earth walls

This paper describes a working stress design methodology for steel reinforced soil walls (K-Stiffness Method) it includes the effects of global wall stiffness, soil strength, Reinforcement layer spacing, and wall height in design. It also discusses a comparison of the method to other methods found in US design codes and guidelines for internal stability design (e.g. AASHTO Simplified Method, Coherent Gravity Method and FHWA structure Stiffness Method). All these three methods use limit equilibrium concepts to develop the design model. It also introduces a large database of full-scale steel reinforced soil and some general information about them. These walls was used to investigate the accuracy and shortcomings of the various reinforcement load prediction methods, reinforcement load and other measurements can be compared to predictions. The primary focus of this paper is on steel reinforced MSE walls with granular backfills

Keywords:

K-stiffness method , limit equilibrium , reinforcement load , MSE walls