Coupling-Based Elastic Solution of Arching Evolution for GRPSE

Abstract

Complicated interactions among embankment soil, geo-reinforcement, vertical piles, and surrounding soils make it difficult to model the behavior of geosynthetic-reinforced and pile-supported embankments (GRPSE). In particular, soil arching within embankment soil plays an important role in the behavior of GRPSEs and evolves with the pile-soil differential settlement. An improved estimation of pile-soil differential settlement by including the pile top settlement can enhance the assessment of the arching effect, compared with existing methods. In this study, a simplified model with evolved arching was developed based on the unit cell, to tightly integrate all possible load transfer mechanisms of GRPSE and derive a pile-soil differential settlement dependent theoretical solution of the critical arch height. Relevant solutions were proposed and validated by comparing experimental results and other existing methods. In particular, it was found that the predicted critical height is not constant but can evolve with the pile-soil differential settlement, indicating that the evolution of the soil arching can be, in theory, monitored step-by-step.