Abstract:

In conventional reinforced soils, the reinforcements are often laid horizontally in the soil. A novel concept of soil reinforced with horizontal and vertical (H-V) reinforcements is proposed in this paper. In the proposed H-V reinforced soil, besides conventional horizontal reinforcements, some vertical reinforcing elements are also placed in the soil. The finite element method is used to analyze the interaction between soil and reinforcements. The strength reduction method is used to study instability of the retaining wall. With the method of c-tanφreduction, comparisons between H-V reinforced soil and traditional reinforced soil in the safety factor and plastic strain distribution are made when the finite element method (FEM) models reach instability.

Key words: horizontal and vertical (H-V) reinforcement; soil-reinforcements interaction; finite element method; strength reduction method