Design of Brick-Faced Retaining Walls Reinforced with Geotextiles: Face Deformation

Design for retaining walls uses almost exclusively limit equilibrium methods, although they do not provide information on the wall deformation level as they consider rigid perfectly plastic behavior for all materials. However, deformation is a key issue for the development of the soil-reinforcement interaction; and therefore, its prediction is very important for design. A simple method on the basis of a very simple theoretical model is presented to predict the face deformations of brick-faced retaining walls reinforced with geotextiles. The model is simple, yet very versatile, and the results compared well with laboratory studies. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)GT.1943-5606.0000613. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.