NUMERICAL SIMULATION BASED ON SPH-DEM ANALYSIS FOR PULL-OUT EXPERIMENT OF MASONRY RETAINING WALL

Abstract

 Masonry retaining walls are very fragile structures against earthquakes and a great number of damages have been reported. We should elucidate a failure mechanism and make appropriate safety assessments and countermeasures.
 The objective of this study is to establish the analytical methodology for the seismic evaluation of the masonry retaining wall. We conducted some numerical simulations based on a coupled the DEM (Distinct Element Method) and the SPH (Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics) analysis for the pull-out experiment, and improved the program code as well as the analytical model by focusing on the inconsistent between the analytical and the experimental results. The calculated residual shape of the masonries was a good agreement with the experimental one, and some points to be improved were classified.