Experimental and numerical investigation of geocell retaining wall

Within the scope of this thesis, retaining walls having 90 cm height in different configurations and angles were created by using geocell and model experiments were performed. In the experiments, circular footings of different diameters, placed on the sand soil behind the walls, were positioned at different distances to the wall and loaded monotonically. As a result of this vertical loading applied to the footing, horizontal displacements occurring on the walls that, produced 4 different types, are examined. The displacements were examined and comparisons were made with the help of displacement sensors placed at the bottom, middle and top of the wall. For example, under the same conditions, there was less displacement in the formed stepped walls than in the straight ones. Likewise, it was observed that the stepped walls formed at an angle of 750 had less displacement than the 900 walls. In addition the experiments were modeled in two dimensions with PLAXIS program using finite element method and numerical analysis were performed. Experimental results were found to be compatible with numerical analysis results. Furthermore, the displacements on the wall were estimated by statistical methods MLR and M5T. It has been found that the M5T method gives better estimation results compared to MLR method and the estimation values of this method are found to be quite compatible with the experimental results.