ABSTRACT
Usually open excavation causes problem to surrounding ground if the proper protection in deforming ground is not taken into account. In practice, retaining wall is commonly used in this case. In addition, struts are used to make a large underground area by an open excavation. However, struts hinder the construction process as a part of the excavated area is occupied with the struts. Anchors are good replacement of struts to excavate large section having deeper excavation depth for smooth handling of construction works. However, in present design method of retaining wall with anchor, earth pressure acting on the retaining wall and its deformation are evaluated by empirical procedure imitating the construction of strut. Since it is expected that the construction of anchor type retaining wall will be increasing day by day, it demands a rational design procedure. The purpose of this research is to investigate the mechanism of anchor type retaining wall conducting both model tests and numerical analyses. In our previous researches (Nakai et al. 2007, Iwata et al. 2008, Shahin et al. 2011a), investigation on the deformation mechanism of the ground has been done considering strut-type retaining wall. It was found that location and stiffness of struts influences
the deformation of the ground. The numerical simulations captured well the results of the model tests. The same constitutive model named as subloading tij model (Nakai & Hinokio 2004) and the same sets of parameter are used in this research. This model can describe typical stress deformation and strength characteristics of soils such as the influence of intermediate principal stress, the influence of stress path dependency of plastic flow and the influence of density and/or confining pressure. In the model tests, mass of aluminum rods are used for which shear strain of the ground in micro level and overall ground behavior can be obtained by image processing technique. The obtained shear strain developments and surface settlements are compared with the results of the corresponding numerical simulations.
