Modeling the two-dimensional failure of dry-stone retaining wall

The development of reinforced concrete early in the XXth century has revolutionized the civil engineering practice and progressively led to the disappearance of the use of dry stone retaining walls (DSRW) for slope reinforcement. Nevertheless these structures present significant advantages such as deformability, natural drainage and lesser grey energy requirement for their construction. The lack of regulation for this kind of construction has also led the local authorities to discard technological solutions for the rehabilitation of damaged DSRW. Over the few decades extensive research has also been conducted to improve the understanding of their behaviour. In this work, we focus on the planar failure of DSRW due to an excessive pressure from backfill. A Discrete Element Method is used for the modelling of the entire soil-wall system. The objective is to find both the water and backfill critical height and corresponding failure mode that were previously obtained throughout several full scale experiments involving various types of block material for the wall, i.e. limestone and schist.