Abstract
Reinforcement with geotextiles have been used in the foundation soil to enhance the resistance of embankments to avoid failure through excessive deformation or shear in the foundation. It is improtant to know the amount of the strain and the displacement of buried geotextiles for the verification of the reinforcement behaviour. Full scale trial constructions were performed to check the deformational characteristics of the polyester(PET) mat which was used for the embankment reinforcement. Many instrumentation equipments including surface settlement plates, profile gauges and inclinometer casings were installed to observe the behaviour of the soft ground due to the soil embankment. 60 electrical resistance strain gauges and 9 vibrating wire LVDTs were installed 세 measure the deformation of the polyester mat. Results of various tests and geotextile, waterproofing and protection from the hazard environments were introduced. The proposed instrumentation method was effective for the monitoring or the geotextile behaviour. The direct attachment of electrical resistance strain gauges on the gertextile mat was able to measure small changes of the strain of geotextiles. At the end of the 5 month monitoring, 54 of 60 (93%) strain gauges and 7 of 9 (78%) displacement transducers survived all perils of the compaction impacts and the humidity. And the tensile strain of grotextiles increased as the ground displacement became larger. Though the observed strain of mats under the 3m high embankment load was less than 1%, the magnitudes of the strain according to the mat spreading method were different from each other.