A simple parametric study on the distribution of geosynthetic strains in geosynthetic-reinforced piled embankment

초록

In geosynthetic reinforced piled embankments, predicting the geosynthetic strains is a very important design procedure. In this paper, to understand the geosynthetic behavior in the piled embankment, a full scale model test was conducted with a biaxial geogrid layer. The measured strains were compared with calculated values obtained by existing theories which are proposed by Zaeske (2001) and Van Eekelen et al. (2013). Comparison results show that the predicted values overestimate the measured strains in most stages of filling. To figure out the reason of differences between theoretical and experimental strains, a simple parametric study was performed. As a result of parametric study on changes of the soft soil stiffness, it is shown that the geosynthetic strains predicted by the theoretical models can be changed very sensitively ranging from 0.02 to 0.46 under low soft soil stiffness (Es < 400 kPa) conditions. Therefore, unexpected small variables can affect a large change on the strain of geogrid under the low soft soil stiffness.