ABSTRACT
Several investigations have recently been conducted to study the mechanical characteristics of RE by using analytical or numerical methods (Bui et al. 2009, 2011, 2014b, Ciancio & Augarde 2013, Ciancio & Robinson 2011). These studies assumed that the cohesion at the interface between earthen layers was perfect. This hypothesis proved to be acceptable for the case of vertical loading (Bui et al. 2014b), but it could be questionable for horizontal loading. To address this problem, Discrete Element Modeling (DEM) seemed to be a relevant means of simulating a RE wall. To our knowledge, no study has used DEM to study RE walls. Therefore, this paper presents an assessment of the DEM’s robustness in the case of RE walls.
