Behavior of Geogrid Reinforced Soil Walls with Geofoam inclusion

This document provides a concept based experimental analysis of the effect of placement position of geofoam on deformation behavior of geogrid reinforced soil walls. Different codal provisions for design of reinforced soil structures are also made using methods as working stress method and load resistance factor design method (BS 8006 (2010), FHWA (2000)). However the major concerns in performance of geogrid reinforced soil walls were found to be the excessive deformations in service life, which is mainly due to the lateral earth pressure force. Different attempts were made to reduce the lateral earth pressure behind reinforced zone with the help of EPS geofoam as a compressible inclusion. Majority of these attempts were restricted to material evaluation and dynamic horizontal load attenuation only. A very few of researchers have put forward their efforts to evaluate the influence of geofoam inclusion on performance of geogrid reinforced soil walls. Efforts made by author in this study was limited the evaluation of the geogrid reinforced soil walls for self weight loading and a single location of the geofoam i.e. exactly behind the reinforced zone. Studies, which showcase the utilization of geofoam within the reinforced mass, have not been reported yet. The present study demonstrates the small scale model tests on geogrid reinforced soil walls with and without geofoam inclusion. Behavior of geogrid reinforced soil walls subjected to a strip loading without geofoam, with geofoam inclusion behind reinforced zone and geofoam inclusion made at the center of the reinforced zone. A 0.023H wide strip loading was gradually applied with the help of Universal testing machine (UTM) at the center of the reinforced zone till the maximum load reaches to 32kN or a maximum settlement of 15mm whichever occurs earlier. A 0.083H thick, low density (8 kg/m3) geofoam was used in the present study as a compressible inclusion.