Evaluation of Confining Effect in Geosynthetics-Reinforced Soil

Abstract

The authors have experimentally examined the reinforcing effects in geogrid-reinforced soil and have evaluated it quantitatively. As a result, it was made clear that the reinforcing effect are expressed by the sum of the tensile effect and the confining effect. In this paper, two-dimensional small model tests for simulating the geosynthetics-reinforced retaining wall have been performed to clarify the mobilized confining effects. The reinforced effects are estimated by the changes of the active earth pressure in the retaining wall without and with geosynthetics-reinforcement. Relationship between the changes of the active earth pressure and the confining effect parameter has discussed in connection with the Mohr-Coulomb failure envelope in reinforced soil.