COMPARE INFLUENCES OF HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL MSE WALL DIMENSIONS WITH GEOCOMPOSITE BACK DRAINAGE SYSTEM TO MAXIMUM STEADY STATE PHREATIC LEVEL

Nowadays, with serious risks to the mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) instability especially for soil mass behind the wall face caused by heavy rainfall. Come from high drainage ability, geocomposite is regarded as an appropriate material for drainage purposes in many geotechnical structures, including MSE walls. However, there are insufficient researches investigated MSE wall geometry design especially with wall dimension oriented follow 2D dimension as horizontal and vertical. This paper presents a series of PLAXIS numerical simulations to investigate the influences of MSE wall dimensions and drainage capacity on seepage responses inside the protected zone of the wall. The research results indicated that the distance from the upstream water source to the drainage face (L) influences most to the maximum steady state phreatic level (ho) variation inside the protected zone. In total comparison that shown the horizontal wall dimensions have more affects on ho drops than vertical wall dimensions.