Abstract
Geosynthetic-reinforced soil walls are structures typically constructed with compacted and thus unsaturated soils. The use of local fine-grained soils as backfill material has been a common practice in view of the significant cost reduction in comparison to granular backfills. This is especially applicable in tropical areas where lateritic soils are found as these material scan exhibit outstanding geotechnical properties mainly under unsaturated conditions. Thus, it is possible to optimize the design and construction of geosynthetic-reinforced soil walls considering soil unsaturation, however it is not known to what extent infiltration can reduce soil suction impairing the safety of the structure. To address the influence of suction on the behavior of geosynthetic structures, a full-scale geotextile-reinforced wall was subjected to infiltration and instrumented to capture the distribution of moisture and soil suction along the reinforced zone, as well as reinforcements strains. This paper presents and discuss the influence of geotextile reinforcement acting as capillary barrier coupled with the wall performance. Results demonstrate that the advancement of infiltration front has a more pronounced effect on deformation as the changes on water contents. Capillary barriers were found to occur retarding infiltration, but not affecting the overall performance of the structure. The average of monitored suction values along the wall height, herein called as “global suction”, was found to be strictly related to maximum reinforcement strains behavior.
Highlights
Many standards recommend the use of granular soils as backfill of mechanically stabilized earth; the use of local fine-grained soils can significantly reduce costs when granular materials are difficult to access
In the other layers (RL1 to RL4), where the moisture sensors were located at mid height of the reinforced layer, the increased water storage of capillary barriers could not be detected at the sensor location
The following conclusions can be drawn from analysis of the experimental results obtained in this study: x Capillary breaks developed during infiltration, which retarded the infiltration in 4 days until the breakthrough suction is achieved and geotextiles become more permeable than soil
Summary
Many standards recommend the use of granular soils as backfill of mechanically stabilized earth; the use of local fine-grained soils can significantly reduce costs when granular materials are difficult to access. Zornberg et al (2010) [1] reports the development of capillary barriers when nonwoven geotextiles underlay unsaturated fine-grained soils. This is because under unsaturated conditions the hydraulic conductivity of nonwoven geotextiles is typically lower than that of the soil. Many studies have reported serviceability problems of reinforced soil structures using local finegrained soils, especially considering their susceptibility to pore water pressure development An important objective of this paper is to evaluate the infiltration processes into the unsaturated fill in a geotextilereinforced wall and their effect on the structure mechanical response This is achieved by monitoring the performance of a large-scale reinforced soil wall. The experimental program focuses on the impact of infiltration in a wall reinforced with nonwoven geotextiles and uses reinforcement strains as key aspects to quantify the wall performance
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