Study of Narrow-Reinforced Earth Wall—A Review

Abstract

In cases where the space available for the reinforced earth (RE) walls is less than required, “narrowed reinforced earth walls” are usually preferred for construction which is placed adjacent to the existing stable slopes/walls. The behavior of such narrow RE walls differs from traditional RE walls, and differences include a magnitude of earth pressure, failure modes, and distribution of tension along with the reinforcement which is required to be understood as these wall systems have contrasting behavior to conventional RE wall. Also, by considering actual characteristics of narrow RE walls, the design of a narrow RE wall can be improvised further to give economical design solutions. Hence, this paper provides reviews of research papers that have been done so far with regard to the narrow RE wall. That research work covers an extensive scope of the area, including centrifugal modeling study, numerical modeling, and field-scale tests on the performance of a narrow RE wall. Literature study revealed that there exists a significant reduction in lateral earth pressure adjacent to shoring wall at greater depth due to arching effect. Moreover, wall aspect ratio and friction characteristics of boundary walls plays a governing role on the reduction of lateral earth pressure behind narrow RE wall. Additionally, critical failure plane was found to be bilinear having an inclination angle less than Rankine’s failure plane which passes through partially from reinforced fill zone and partially from an interface between narrow RE wall and existing stable wall face.