ABSTRACT
A rigid plastic finite element method for a stability analysis of a reinforced soil is discussed in this article. In the literature, deformation constraints such as no-length change or no-angle change between FEM nodes were introduced as internal constraints to model the interaction between reinforced members (RMs) and surrounding soils. It is noteworthy that this implementation requires no meshing of RMs. This idea can be extended to more general cases, such as one-directional-resistant (tensile only) RMs and slippage of RMs from soils, by using the duality of the limit theorems (upper bound and lower bound theorems). A mathematical framework of rigid-plastic finite element method with finite strengths of RMs and bonding between RMs and soils is presented. Some numerical examples are also demonstrated to show the ability of the proposed method.
