Introduction
Mechanically stabilized walls (MSWs) are a class of earth retaining walls that use horizontal layers of metallic or geosynthetic reinforcement placed within the wall backfill to create a composite mass of soil, reinforcement layers, and facing. This mass (or block) acts as a gravity structure to resist the destabilizing earth forces that act at the back of the reinforced soil zone. Details of some MSW types are illustrated in Fig. 1. The function of the gravity structure (reinforced zone including the facing) can be imagined equivalent to conventional gravity retaining wall structures including reinforced concrete T-sections. The advantage of MSWs over conventional gravity wall structures, based on North American experience, is that they can be constructed for as little...
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Bathurst, R.J. (2014). Design of Mechanically Stabilized Walls (MSWs). In: Beer, M., Kougioumtzoglou, I., Patelli, E., Au, IK. (eds) Encyclopedia of Earthquake Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36197-5_113-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36197-5_113-1
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