DEM Modeling of a Plate Bearing Capacity Test on a Mesh-Soil System

Anchored wire mesh facings are commonly adopted as a countermeasure against shallow instabilities in granular soil slopes. In this work, the interaction between a wire mesh panel and a granular material is investigated by adopting a discrete element approach. The wire mesh is modeled as a set of interconnected nodal particles. The interaction between the nodal particles is ruled by experimentally derived elasto-plastic tensile laws in which a distortion is introduced stochastically to account for the geometrical irregularities of the wires in real mesh panels. The granular layer is described by rolling resistant spherical particles. Experimental results conducted on a special plate bearing test configuration in which a mesh panel was draped over the granular layer are used for the model calibration. The numerical outputs permit investigation of the complex interaction mechanism among the mesh and the granular layer and estimation of the different contribution of the system’s components. Furthermore, the impact of the mesh introduction on the failure mechanism occurring in the granular soil is discussed in light of the numerical findings. Finally, the role of the loading plate geometry and of the mesh mechanical characteristics on the system bearing capacity and on the mesh-soil interaction is addressed.