Numerical Modeling of Reinforced Soil Walls Using Multiphase Approach and Hyperbolic Constitutive Model

Due to widespread application of reinforced soil media and the crucial need to understand and anticipate its actual behavior, in addition to the fact that direct numerical analysis of reinforced masses is a difficult and time-consuming procedure, homogenization methods have been introduced. In this study, multiphase approach which is considered as a new framework in homogenization methods is developed. This development is done using the Duncan-Chang hyperbolic model for simulating the behavior of soil in a reinforced medium. In this study, efforts have been made to propose a new multiphase model for analyzing reinforced soil media, based on assigning the Duncan-Chang constitutive model to soil and elastic-perfectly plastic behavior to reinforcements. A developed multiphase model is used to simulate a full-scale reinforced soil wall. The wall has been analyzed by means of both direct and homogenization approaches, using Duncan-Chang constitutive model and the developed multiphase model, respectively. After comparing the results of the analyses, sufficient accuracy of homogenization approach using proposed multiphase model has been approved. It is also observed that in contrast to its simplicity, the Duncan-Chang hyperbolic model presents a suitable estimation of behavior of the reinforced soil wall in case of implementing direct analysismethod.