Retaining walls damaged in the Chi-Chi earthquake

Abstract

This paper investigates the failure of three gravity walls due to the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake. Characteristics of the damaged walls were carefully recorded and backfill materials behind the damaged walls were collected and tested in the laboratory. Both the simplified analysis based on the Mononobe-Okabe method and the simplified dynamic analysis based on the Richards-Elms method were adopted. For the first case, the sliding of concrete wall blocks along the construction joint was observed. It was found that, during the earthquake, the frictional resistance at the untreated construction joint was not sufficient to resist the dynamic lateral thrust. For the second case, the retaining wall settled significantly and tilted about its toe. Seismic analysis of the wall indicated that, under the same horizontal acceleration, the factor of safety against bearing capacity failure was lower than that against overturning and sliding. A stability check against bearing capacity failure for the retaining wall should never be neglected. For the third case, the retaining wall built on top of the Che-Lung-Pu fault was severely damaged by the fault rupture. During the earthquake, the vertical displacement of the hanging wall uplifted the backfill, causing the wall to overturn. Horizontal displacement of the hanging wall caused the wall to slide and the soil in front of the toe to heave.