Abstract
Reinforced soil walls performed well during major earthquakes even if designed for no or relatively less seismic intensity. This unexpected conservatism may be attributed to the analyses of reinforced soil walls using various methods considering bond resistance due to only axial pullout of the reinforcement and the assumption of independence of destabilizing force to the provision of reinforcement. The failure surface in a reinforced soil wall, almost always intersects the reinforcement layers obliquely thus subjecting the reinforcement to oblique force by the sliding wedge of the backfill. The reinforcement deforms transversely under the action of oblique force or displacement. The soil beneath the reinforcement mobilizes additional normal stresses resulting in additional bond resistance and a decrease in the net destabilizing force significantly. This paper deals with the kinematics of reinforced soil wall subjected to oblique force/displacement using the horizontal slices method. Parametric studies quantify the effects of different parameters on the newly defined factors of safety against pullout failure of the reinforced soil wall considering the increase in bond resistance and the mobilized transverse force due to transverse pull or displacement.