Evaluating the Role of Geofoam Properties in Reducing Lateral Loads on Retaining Walls: A Numerical Study

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) geofoam is a lightweight compressible material that has been widely used in various civil engineering projects. One interesting application of EPS in geotechnical engineering is to reduce the lateral earth pressure on rigid non-yielding retaining walls. The compressible nature of the EPS geofoam allows for the shear strength of the backfill soil to be mobilized, which leads to a reduction in lateral earth pressure acting on the wall. In this study, a finite element model is developed and used to investigate the role of geofoam inclusion between a rigid retaining wall and the backfill material on the earth pressure transferred to the wall structure. The developed model was first calibrated using experimental data. Then, a parametric study was conducted to investigate the effect of EPS geofoam density, relative thickness with respect to the wall height, and the frictional angle of backfill soil on the effectiveness of this technique in reducing lateral earth pressure. Results showed that low-density EPS geofoam inclusion provides the best performance, particularly when coupled with backfill of low friction angle. The proposed modeling approach has shown to be efficient in solving this class of problems and can be used to model similar soil-geofoam-structure interaction problems.