Bathurst et al. (2002) evaluated the effects of facing batter and the
interface shear properties of facing by testing four different 1:6 scale
1-m-high reinforced segmental retaining wall models on the shaking
table using a base input frequency of 5 Hz, corresponding to the 2 Hz
used in the prototype. The vertical wall with fixed block-block and
block-geosynthetic interfaces had the smallest displacements. The
vertical wall with frictional interfaces performed the worst, but increasing
the wall batter improved performance. Acceleration amplification
factors as high as 2.2 were recorded at the top. Geosynthetic
tensile loads were low compared with capacity. The actual failure
mechanism was difficult to predict.