Skip to content

Gravity retaining walls are conventional retaining structures which have been widely used. The main objective of this paper is to study the influence of vertical inclusion of EPS (expanded polysty-rene) geofoam on seismic response of gravity retaining wall. Seismic response of gravity retaining walls with and without geofoam inclusion just behind the gravity wall is investigated. A numerical model of gravity retaining wall is developed using FLAC 2D. Geofoam thickness is varied to investigate the effec-tiveness in mitigating seismic induced lateral wall displacements. Maximum wall lateral displacement profiles along the height of the wall are presented. From this study, it is concluded that wall with vertical inclusion of EPS geofoam performed better during earthquake motions. Increase in geofoam thickness re-duces the wall lateral displacements considerably. The reduction in wall lateral displacements is found to be higher in wall subjected to low peak ground acceleration.