Earth pressure analysis for separated abutment in transition zone

As bridge and tunnel construction comprise a large proportion of railway construction, the importance of transition zones has increased. In this study, a reinforced segmental retaining wall was constructed to separate abutment and backfill. This was done by stacking up geosynthetic tubes. At the object field, the earth pressure acting on abutment was measured. Accordingly, the distributions of earth pressure and geotechnical properties were derived from the measured earth pressure. The measured earth pressure and Rankine earth pressure showed a lot of differences, whereas the measured earth pressure and silo earth pressure appeared similar because the lateral earth pressure decreases non-linearly with depth. Therefore, the most similar case to the measured lateral earth pressure distribution was derived by changing the geotechnical properties to estimate the silo earth pressure. Using the derived results, the lateral earth pressure acting on a separated abutment is suggested, depending on the space between abutment and backfill.