9417051 Siddharthan The objective of this study is to develop and validate seismic design guidelines for mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls based on their behavior in geotechnical centrifuge tests. There are currently no realistic guidelines available to predict the behavior of mechanically stabilized earth walls under seismic loading conditions. The main goals of the study are: (1) to conduct centrifuge tests on at least five model configurations with sinusoidal and earthquake-like base excitations to gain insight into the characteristic behavior of MSE walls, (2) to develop a simpler rigid-plastic analytical model to predict permanent seismic displacement of MSE walls, (3) to validate the proposed numerical model using existing and new centrifuge model tests and finite element studies, and (4) to develop simple seismic design guidelines for MSE walls. The centrifuge tests are conducted on the large geotechnical centrifuge at the University of California - Davis. ***
