Abstract
This paper discusses the geosynthetic-reinforcement effect. The reinforcing effect arises from the equilibrium of inner forces between extension forces working to the geosynthetics and stresses induced in the soil media. In this paper, a series of model tests and their numerical simulations are carried out to examine this geosynthetics-soils mechanical interaction. The compacted soils are wrapped by geosynthetics and sheared in the newly developed loading test apparatus with monitoring the deformation and stresses. It is revealed that, throughout this paper, the geosynthetic-reinforcement effect is mobilized by confining the ‘dilatancy characteristics’ of compacted soils. And also, a numerical simulation technique to rationally explain the observed facts obtained from model tests is proposed in this paper.
