School of PE Blog

Introduction:
Over the past few years Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil Structures have gained increasing popularity in civil engineering construction industry. In construction, geosynthetic reinforced soil structures have showed several distinct advantages over conventional construction engineering practices. In general, structures using geosynthetic reinforcement requires less excavation, therefore they are quite easy in designing as well as for construction, resists to differential settlement and to earthquakes.
Geosynthetic Reinforcement Soil Structures Engineering Parameters
Reinforcement of soil is a composite construction practice adopted by combining soil with the reinforcement of tensile materials. Due to this structures possesses high compressive and tensile strength. In the current civil engineering applications, the reinforcement usually consists of sheets or strips of galvanized steel, anchors, planks, rope and combination of these or other tensile materials. In the early days, the metal strips were used as reinforcement, and the composite material was termed 'Reinforced Earth' by Henry Vidal (1966, 1969) who presented the concept of improving the strength of a soil mass by placing reinforced material within the soil. Construction procedures and operational methods, properties of construction materials are thoroughly discussed in PE Civil Engineering exam review course. Therefore, it helps the PE Exam aspirants to achieve passing score at these sections.
Testing Models and Engineering Analysis of Geosynthetic Reinforcement Soil Structures
An experimental model was developed to describe the actual contribution of reinforcement strength and reinforcement spacing in between individual strips or sheets. The engineering model specifically used to calculate lateral displacement of a geosynthetic soil structure. The engineering model can be used in regular design for determining the reinforcement strength. A series of field tests also called composite tests, are designed and conducted to analyze the behavior of a geosynthetic reinforcement composite with variable spacing, and strength requirements.
The test data is used for verifying the analytical model to calculate strength properties of a geosynthetic reinforcement soil composite. With the help of test data, the effect of reinforcement, and shear strength of soil composites are analyzed. Principles of Engineering exam review course refresh geotechnical investigation methods and their ASTM testing codes for PE Civil Exam preparation.
Engineering Analysis and Observations
The placement of geosynthetic reinforcement has a characteristic of minimizing dilation of the nearby soil mass by lowering the dilation angle of the reinforced soil. The angle of dilation is one of the physical properties of geosynthetic reinforcement soil. Several tests with variable reinforcement capacity, reinforcement spacing, and confining pressures are carried out to prove the angle of dilation that will be minimized through geosynthetic reinforcement soil. Since the angle of dilation is lower than the dilation angle of natural soil mass without any reinforcement, majority of the construction engineering works are adopting geosynthetic reinforcement to reduce angle of dilation.