Modeling of the confining effect due to the geosynthetic wrapping of compacted soil specimens

Abstract

This paper presents the modeling of the composite soil-geosynthetic structure and discusses the effect of the reinforcement arising from the confining of the deformation of the soil by geosynthetics. A series of compressive shear tests for compacted sandy soil specimens, wrapped in geosynthetics, is carried out for the purpose of quantitatively examining the effect of the geosynthetic reinforcement arising from the confining of the deformation of compacted soils during shearing. Furthermore, an elasto-plastic modeling for compacted soil and a rational determination procedure for input parameters, needed in the elasto-plastic modeling, are presented. In this paper, the subloading yielding surface is introduced to the elasto-plastic modeling in order to describe the irreversible deformation characteristics of compacted soil during shearing. Since compacted soil is essentially unsaturated and its mechanical behavior is influenced by the suction working in the compacted soil media, the suction effect is taken into account in estimating of the degree of compaction. Finally, an elasto-plastic finite element simulation is conducted and the geosynthetic-reinforcement effect is presented.