Abstract
When a reinforced soil structure is used for supporting a heavy important structure with a severe limit of deformation, it is quite essential to restrain its deformation against cyclic live load as well as heavy dead load. In cases of reinforced soil pier and abutments supporting bridges for railway or highway, a huge number of cyclic loads with relatively small amplitude is applied, and the residual deformation may accumulate to a harmful level.
In this study, scaled models of reinforced soil pier were tested with cyclic loading. The total amount of the reinforcement was changed to see its effects on the deformation of the structure due to small-amplitude cyclic loading. The elastic modulus of a reinforced soil structure against cyclic loading with a small amplitude is not clearly affected by the total stiffness of the reinforcement. The stress level dependency of the elastic modulus of the backfill material is much more effective. Most of the residual deformation during cyclic loading is due to creep deformation which is caused by high average stress level during the cyclic loading procedures, rather than accumulation of plastic strain generated by each loading cycle. The residual deformation can be restrained to a smaller level when the total stiffness of the reinforcement is higher.
