An Investigation of Seismic Base-isolators on Stories Displacements and Plastic Hinge FormationNumerical Analysis of Dynamic Behavior of Mechanically Stabilized Earth Walls with Geosynthetics

  Abstract   Nowadays reinforced Mechanically Stabilized Earth Walls (MSEW) with Geosynthetics, are used extensively as retaining walls and bridge abutments in urban and mountainous regions because their advantages. The MSEW is a new branch of construction technology which consists of three elements: compacted backfill, reinforced layers and facing elements. The mechanically stabilized earth Walls have many advantages compared with conventional reinforced concrete and concrete gravity retaining walls such as more flexibility against settlement on soft soils, higher safety during earthquakes and their cost effective. Because of these technical and economical advantages, study of the MSEW behavior in various load conditions like seismic loading is very important. In this paper results from a comprehensive numerical simulation by finite difference method that carried out to investigate the behavior of dynamic response of MSEW are presented. Numerical results illustrate the MSEW dynamic response for fixed toe and sliding toe conditions. Ultimately numerical simulation results show that the stiffness of reinforcement layers are great influence on dynamic load increment in geosynthetics layers.