• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2009.09a
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• pp.359-366
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• 2009

The present paper analyzes and discusses the effect of facing system and staged construction in GRS (geosynethetic reinforced soil) walls for railway structures throughout various case analyses. The result shows that postconstruction facing system by staged construction procedures is more advantageous for railway structure construction than preconstruction and simultaneous construction facing system with reinforced soil.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.17-23
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• 2007

To construct an ideal geosynthetic reinforced soil retaining wall (GRS-RW), the facing of the wall should be flexible enough to accommodate a large deformation of the supporting ground and to develop the large tensile force in reinforcements during wall construction as long as the stability is ensured, but should be rigid enough to be stiff and stable as well as durable and aesthetically acceptable for a long life time when the wall is in service. Facing conditions during the construction and service of the wall are quite different. So it is difficult to be satisfied all these conditions with the current construction method which is mainly used in reinforced wall construction in Korea. Most of this contradiction could be solved by the staged construction procedure. According to the results of cases and references analyses, stage construction procedures make it possible to accommodate large deformation of the supporting ground and backfill without losing the stability of the wall, and to derive the tensile strength of reinforcement causing deformation of the facing. When the facing is a full-height rigid one, it also appeared almost impossible to occur a local shear failure of the active zone, and pull-out failure of reinforcements. Therefore, GRS-RWs having a full-height rigid facing have been constructed by the staged construction procedures that matched well with the theory of reinforced soil, which had outstanding stability and durability, and thus could be used for railways and bridge abutments in Korea in the future.