TWO-DIMENSIONAL NUMERICAL MODELLING OF MODULAR-BLOCK SOIL RETAINING WALLS COLLAPSE USING MESHFREE METHOD

Modular-block retaining wall system has been extensively used to stabilize natural and cut- slope. Despite this fact, numerical development for prediction of the large deformation and flexible b ehavior of modular retaining wall bocks is still not advanc ed. To overcome this limitation, this paper present s a new numerical approach which can be used to simulate la rge deformation and flexible behavior of the modula r- block retaining wall system. Herein, soil is modell ed using an elasto-plastic constitutive model, whil e wall blocks are assumed rigidity with full degree of mot ion. A linear contact model is proposed to simulate interaction between soil and wall block. Experiment s were also conducted to validate the proposed nume rical framework. It is showed that the proposed numerical framework can simulate well behavior of the modular- block retaining wall system.