Análise de Estabilidade de Muros de Contenção de Alvenaria por Método de Equilíbrio Limite com Verificação com Ensaios de Carga: Conferência Brasileira sobre Estabilidade de Encostas

Masonry retaining walls represent an antique construction technique which can be seen across several countries, most of them incorporated into modern buildings. With regard to stability analysis, such structures are considered as monolithic blocks, and most times discontinuities between bricks and internal deformations are neglected. Therefore, this paper aims to verify alternative methods of analysis of such structures, taking into consideration friction between bricks and possible deformations. For this, a masonry retaining was studied, 5 m high, located in the district of Deptford, London. In a numerical way, it was used a limit-equilibrium method proposed by Alejano et al (2012a), which assumes that the wall is built with cuboid bricks, and their stability is guaranteed by their self-weight, and the forces are calculated for each row of bricks. Initially, the wall was considered as a monolithic block, subjected to active pressure and under two groundwater conditions, the most probable and the worst ones. It was noted that the plot for the factor of safety as a function of friction angle may be adjusted by a linear function in a case of overturning; for sliding, the factor of safety tends to a vertical asymptote. Experimentally, six loading tests were conducted for a 1:20 scale model of the wall sculptured in a timber box, where the load was applied in the backfill. The model was moulded following three layouts: a monolithic block and other two models split into 5 and 15 pieces. Also, fine sand was used as backfill and the toe of the wall was settled in a layer of coarse sand. As a result, it was noted that overturning is the main mechanism of rupture in the case of monolithic block, whereas for the other two layouts the model tends to deform before producing a mechanism of overturning or sliding