Numerical Analysis of the Mechanical Response of Anchored Wire Meshes

Anchored wire meshes are commonly adopted to stabilise potentially unstable slopes in granular soils. In most of the cases, this reinforcement technique is employed either as an active or a passive anchoring system. In both cases, the definition of a characteristic curve putting in relation the stabilizing force with the displacement of the soil in the “far field” is crucial. To optimize the employment of these reinforcement techniques, the authors performed a series of 3D FEM numerical analyses aimed at highlighting the interaction mechanisms developing between soil and stabilizing system. To correctly reproduce the mechanical response of the wire mesh, this latter is modelled as a membrane and the numerical analyses are performed by employing a large displacement approach. The soil mechanical behaviour is modelled by means of an elastic perfectly plastic constitutive relationship: the failure condition is described by means of the Mohr Coulomb criterion and the flow rule is assumed to be non-associated.