• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.323-328
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• 2002

Soil-steel structures have been used for the underpass, or drainage systems in the road embankment. This type of structures sustain external load using the correlations with the steel wall and engineered backfill materials. Buried flexible conduits made of corrugated steel plates for the coastal road was tested under vehicle loading to investigate the effects of live load. Testing conduits was a circular structure with a diameter of 6.25m. Live-load tests were conducted on two sections, one of which an attempt was made to reinforce the soil cover with the two layers of geo-gird. Hoop fiber strains of corrugated plate, normal earth pressures exerted outside the structure, and deformations of structure were instrumented during the tests. This paper describes the measured static and dynamic load responses of structure. Wall thrust by vehicle loads increased mainly at the crown and shoulder part of the conduit. However additional bending moment by vehicle loads was neglectable. The effectiveness of geogrid-reinforced soil cover on reducing hoop thrust is also discussed based on the measurements in two sections of the structure. The maximum thrusts at the section with geogrid-reinforced soil cover was 85-92% of those with un-reinforced soil cover in the static load tests of the circular structure; this confirms the beneficial effect of soil cover reinforcement on reducing the hoop thrust. However, it was revealed that the two layers of geogrid had no effect on reducing the overburden pressure at the crown level of structure. The obtained values of DLA decrease approximately in proportion to the increase in soil cover from 0.9m to 1.5m. These values are about 1.2-1.4 times higher than those specified in CHBDC.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 2012

Generally levee or revetment becomes weak by erosion (scour) due to saturation of ground with infiltration, flowing water. So when levee or revetment is constructed, slope reinforcement must be installed to prevent failure. In this study experimental test was performed for verifying shear resistance, horizontal permeability and rooting ability of Geocomb designed to address the shortcomings of 3-dimension Geocell. Geocomb is one of geosynthetics and the advanced system of geogrid. According to the results of shear test, internal friction angle of reinforced ground with Geocomb was increasing compared with existing material and horizontal permeability of ground with Geocomb was bigger than geocell, porous geocell reinforcing ground. Lastly rooting ability of geocomb is most excellent. These results determined for the inner surface of the cell is net structure.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.65-77
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• 2005

This paper investigates the failure mechanism of geosynthetic-reinforced segmental retaining walls with tiered configuration using reduced-scale model tests. The reduced scale model test set-up was established to simulate a 5 m high full-scale wall. The geometry and material properties used in the model test were determined based on the Similitude Laws. The wall failures in the model tests were successfully generated by their self weight without any surface loading and analyzed examining the digital video recordings. The failure mechanisms was examined with respect to the various offsets between the lower and upper teres and the reinforcement length. Based on the results the appropriateness of the current design guideline was discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.55-66
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• 2011

This paper presents the results of an investigation on the failure mechanism of geosynthetic reinforced soil walls in back-to-back configuration using 1-g reduced-scale model tests as well as discrete element method-based numerical investigation. In the 1-g reduced scale model tests, 1/10 scale back-to-back walls were constructed so that the wall can be brought to failure by its own weight and the effect of reinforcement length on the failure mechanism was investigated. In addition, a validated discrete element method-based numerical model was used to further investigate the failure mechanism of back-to-back walls with different boundary conditions. The results were then compared with the failure mechanisms defined in the FHWA design guideline.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2006.03a
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• pp.96-102
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• 2006

Because of the increasing need to use clayey soil as the backfill in reinforced soil structures and embankment material, nonwoven geotextiles with the drain capability have been receiving much attention. However, there are few studies of the deformation behavior of nonwoven geotextiles at geosynthetics reinforced soil structures in the field because the nonwoven geotextile, which has low tensile stiffness and higher deformability than geogrids and woven geotextiles, is difficult to measure its deformation by strain gauges and to prevent the water from infiltrating. This study proposes a new, more convenient method to measure the deformation behaviour of nonwoven geotextile by using a strain gauge; and examines the availability of the method by conducting laboratory tests and by applying it on two geosynthetics reinforced soil (GRS) walls in the field. A wide-width tensile test conducted under confining pressure of 7kPa showed that the local deformation of nonwoven geotextile measured with strain gauges has a similar pattern to the total deformation measured with LVDT. In the field GRS walls, nonwoven geotextile showed a larger deformation range than the woven geotextile and geogrid; however, the deformation patterns of these three reinforcement materials were similar. The function of strain gauges attached to nonwoven geotextile in the walls works normally for 16 months. Therefore, the method proposed in this study for measuring nonwoven geotextile deformation by using a strain gauge proved useful.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.29 no.11
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• pp.107-118
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• 2013

Geosynthetic reinforced soil (GRS) walls have been increasingly applied recently due to its numerous geotechnical engineering applications. However failure occurs in some cases of constructed GRS walls. These GRS wall failures are mostly due to the unpredictable characteristics of intensive rainfall. Hence, the need for new and innovative ideas for rehabilitation methods has been getting attention. This paper introduces a case study for the design and restoration method of collapsed GRS wall using Limit equilibrium and Numerical Analyses. Restoration method includes: (1) soil nailing without backfill excavation and (2) reconstruction with GRS wall after collapsed backfill excavation. Analyses results show minimal horizontal displacements and shear strain on the reinforced concrete facing for the restoration case with soil nailing. On the other hand, horizontal displacements are developed in the middle of the mortar block facing and shear strains are developed at the bottom facing with spiral curves for the reconstructed GRS wall after collapsed backfill excavation. Therefore, the collapsed GRS wall was restored with the soil nailing without backfill excavation and its construction procedures are discussed in this paper.

• Geotechnical Engineering
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.157-178
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• 1996

Current design methods for reinforced earth structures take no account of the magnitude of the strains induced in the tensile members as these are invariably manufactured from high modulus materials, such as steel, where straits are unlikely to be significant. With fabrics, however, large strains may frequently be induced and it is important to determine these to enable the stability of the structure to be assessed. In the present paper internal design method of analysis relating to the use of fabric reinforcements in reinforced earth structures for both stress and strain considerations is presented. For the internal stability analysis against rupture and pullout of the fabric reinforcements, a strain compatibility analysis procedure that considers the effects of reinforcement stiffness, relative movement between the soil and reinforcements, and compaction-induced stresses as studied by Ehrlich 8l Mitchell is used. I Bowever, the soil-reinforcement interaction is modeled by relating nonlinear elastic soil behavior to nonlinear response of the reinforcement. The soil constitutive model used is a modified vertsion of the hyperbolic soil model and compaction stress model proposed by Duncan et at., and iterative step-loading approach is used to take nonlinear soil behavior into consideration. The effects of seepage pressures are also dealt with in the proposed method of analy For purposes of assessing the strain behavior oi the fabric reinforcements, nonlinear model of hyperbolic form describing the load-extension relation of fabrics is employed. A procedure for specifying the strength characteristics of paraweb polyester fibre multicord, needle punched non-woven geotHxtile and knitted polyester geogrid is also described which may provide a more convenient procedure for incorporating the fablic properties into the prediction of fabric deformations. An attempt to define improvement in bond-linkage at the interconnecting nodes of the fabric reinforced earth stracture due to the confining stress is further made. The proposed method of analysis has been applied to estimate the maximum tensions, deformations and strains of the fabric reinforcements. The results are then compared with those of finite element analysis and experimental tests, and show in general good agreements indicating the effectiveness of the proposed method of analysis. Analytical parametric studies are also carried out to investigate the effects of relative soil-fabric reinforcement stiffness, locked-in stresses, compaction load and seepage pressures on the magnitude and variation of the fabric deformations.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.225-238
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• 2018

In this paper, to investigate the influence of installation damage, a variety of full-scale field installation tests with 15 geosynthetics reinforcements and fill materials of various grain size distribution have been performed. The full-scale field installation test was conducted with reference to the FHWA (2009) guidelines. The tensile strength tests were performed by sampling up to 20 specimens randomly from the excavated geosynthetics reinforcements after compaction of fill material, and the degree of decrease in tensile strength of reinforcements due to compaction was analyzed based on the experiment results. It was found that the degree of tensile strength reduction of geosynthetics reinforcements due to the compaction of fill material is greatly influenced by the type of reinforcement and the maximum diameter of fill material. In addition, it was found that the strength reduction ratio of PET geogrid (PVC coating) with relatively small stiffness was greatest, and that the larger the maximum grain size of the fill material, the greater the strength reduction ratio. And also, a more reasonable evaluation method for the installation damage reduction factor of geosynthetics reinforcements is proposed based on the results of full-scale field installation tests in present study and the existing test results.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.25-32
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• 2007

Because of the increasing use of clayey soil as the backfill in reinfurced soil structures and embankments, nonwoven geotextiles of drain capability have been receiving much attention. However, there are few studies on the deformation behavior analysis of nonwoven geotextiles in reinforced soil structures in the site because nonwoven geotextiles which have low tensile stiffness and higher deformability than geogrids and woven geotextiles, are difficult to measure their deformation by using strain gauges. In this study, it was suggested that a new and more convenient method could measure the deformation behaviour of nonwoven geotextile using a strain gauge and examine the availability of the method by conducting laboratory tests and applying to two geosynthetics reinforced soil (GRS) walls in the site. The result of wide-width tensile test conducted under confining pressure of 70 kPa shows that the local deformation of nonwoven geotextile to be measured with strain gauges has a similar pattern to the total deformation measured with LVDT. In the GRS walls, nonwoven geotextile shows a larger deformation range than the woven geotextile and geogrid. However, the deformation patterns of these three reinforcement materials are similar. The function of strain gauges attached to nonwoven geotextile in the walls works normally for 16 months. Therefore, the method proposed in this study for measuring nonwoven geotextile deformation using a strain gauge has proved useful.