Abstract
Stacked soil bags have high compressive strength when compressed vertically, but considerably low resistance against lateral shearing. For this reason, sliding failure would be the fundamental concern in soil structures of stacked soil bags. In this study, to increase resistance against sliding, soil bags were stacked in the inclined direction as castle walls and rock walls. Their shear characteristics as well as those when stacked horizontally were examined. Three layers of soil bags stacked in the inclined (δ=18°) and horizontal (δ=0°) directions were prepared using two kinds of backfill materials, Toyoura sand and recycled crushed concrete aggregate. Lateral shear tests of these soil bags were conducted at different vertical confining pressures (30kPa, 150kPa, 300kPa). Test results showed that the shear strength of inclined stacked soil bags (δ=18°) is much larger than that of horizontally stacked soil bags (δ=0°). It was found that the failure mode is slippage between soil bags at low confining pressure while shear failure of the backfill in the soil bags at high confining pressure. It was shown that soil bags backfilled with crushed concrete aggregate had higher resistance to shear deformation than soil bags backfilled with Toyoura sand due to a high particle diameter and a high shear strength.
