Stability analysis of reinforced soil structures introducing some linear constraint conditions upon the 3-D velocity field

A series of FE computations on reinforced soils were carried out introducing a new 3-D rigid plastic FE analysis method where a linear constraint condition of “ no-length change” upon the consecutive soil nodes along a reinforcing barare imposed. Stability of a reinforced soil slope was studied for varying friction angles and the reinforcement lengths. Axial force in the reinforcement, safety factor and velocity field were studied. The difference between the 2-D modeling of linear reinforcements as an equivalent continuous plate and linear reinforcements as is in 3-D analysis were distinguished. Effectiveness of the reinforcement in reducing the lateral deformation and improving the safety factor could be explained in better way than in the 2 - D analysis. The 3-D analysis is more challenging and promising in studying the Reinforced Soil Structures and also to verify and improve the performance of the existing as well as newly proposed 2-D analysis methods e.g. RPFEM.