Effects of connection strength between rigid facing and reinforcement on seismic stability of integral GRS bridge

Abstract

A new bridge system comprising of a pair of geosynthetic-reinforced soil (GRS) retaining walls having full-height rigid facings that are unified with a girder, without using girder supports, is proposed. To validate the seismic stability of this new bridge system (called the integral GRS bridge), in particular to evaluate the effects of the connection strength of reinforcement at the back of facing, a series of 1g shaking table tests were performed on scaled bridge models comprising of air-dried Toyoura sand as the backfill having different connection strengths. The seismic stability increased with an increase in the connection strength. The test results showed that, for a sufficiently high seismic stability of the new bridge system, it is necessary to ensure not only sufficiently high tensile rupture strength of reinforcement but also sufficiently high connection strength and pull-out resistance.