The seismic performance of geosynthetic reinforced earth.

The seismic performance-based design of structures is becoming very widespread in civil engineering, being more realistic to accept different levels of damage in proportion to the return period of the design earthquake under consideration [EUROCODE 8, 2005; AGI, 2005; NTC, 2008]. However, within the European rules this approach is little considered in the case of composite and mixed works, such as reinforced earth with geosynthetics. The paper deals with the pseudo-static approach in studying the ultimate limit state of reinforced earth works. The main purpose of the research was to quantify the reduction factor of the maximum acceleration (PGA) of the design strong motion, due to the global ductile behaviour of the structure. In so doing, the ultimate limit state of the structure may be verified under pseudo-static conditions, by working with a reduced acceleration in a way similar to what is done in concrete structures.