Physical modelling of anchored steel sheet pile walls under seismic actions

This paper describes an experimental investigation of the behaviour of anchored Steel Sheet Pile (SSP) walls under seismic actions. Dynamic centrifuge tests on reduced scale models of anchored SSP walls in dry medium dense sand were carried out on the Turner beam centrifuge at the Schofield Centre, Cambridge University. In order to be able to observe the failure mechanism, the tests were carried out in a rigid container with a Perspex viewing window. A layer of Duxseal© was placed on the lateral boundaries of the container to minimise reflections. The amplitude of the earthquakes was increased up to a peak acceleration significantly higher than critical, in order to trigger failure of the soil-wall-anchor system. In this paper the experimental results are presented in terms of bending moments along the retaining wall, anchor forces and displacement fields of both the retaining wall and the soil behind it. Displacement field and hence soil strains were obtained by particle image velocimetry analyses