| Abstract: | Reinforced earth in plane strain is idealized as a homogeneous material with the strips attached to the elastic soil matirx by a conceptual shear zone. A ‘no-slip’ finite element model is derived by assigning a large shear modulus to the shear zone. Relaxation of this modulus using a tangential stiffness algorithm in conjunction with a Mohr–Coulomb strip-slip criterion allows slipping to be simulated. The finite element formulation is validated and the finite element discretization assessed by comparisons against exact solutions for a simple test problem. An idealized reinforced earth wall example is used to demonstrate the feasibility of the method and to answer the question: ‘is slipping significant?’ The method is shown to be potentially useful, and slipping is shown to be significant. |
