Nowadays the technology of geosynthetic reinforced soil has been widely used in road construction engineering. It has been proved in practice that geosynthetic reinforced embankment possesses unique superiority in complex geological and geomorphological conditions. A road section of the mountainous expressway is located between two tunnels crossing over a gully, where the former bridge plan has been replaced by geosynthetic reinforced embankment (steep slopes or walls). The high reinforced embankment was quite difficult to construct. A series of stability analysis have been carried out, which lead to a combined design. Integrated monitoring was conducted for some typical cross-sections, and the results have proved the effectiveness of the adopted design solutions.
Objective: develop a geosynthetic reinforced soil system serving as high fill embankment for road construction in mountainous terrain.
Approach: Numerical modeling, monitoring of protocol and centrifugal modeling were applied to investigate the behaviors of the high geogrid reinforced embankment.
Significant results and potential impact: a combined design and construction method have developed, which consisted of geogrid reinforcements, supporting concrete masonry piers as a stable foundation base, anchor bolts to enhance anchoring force and drainage system to discharge upstream water.
Principal investigators:
C. Xu, F. Ren, Y. Luo, B. Jia
Founding:
National Science Foundation, and financial support from the Transportation and Communication Department of Hubei Province.
Publications: 1) Y. Luo, C. Xu, B. Jia. Centrifuge modeling of Shored MSE walls with different interface connections. Proceedings of 10 ICG, 2014, Berlin, Germany. 2) C. Xu, Y. Luo. Behavior of high reinforced embankments with Wrap-around Facing. ASCE GSP 231, Proceedings of GeoCongress 2013, March 3-7, San Diego, California, US.
The finished high geogrid reinforced embankment
A typical cross-section design drawing of the geogrid reinforeced embankment
