Design of Geotextile-reinforced Structures.

For some years past the development of the use of geotextiles in reinforcing structures seems to have asserted itself by reason of the possibility offered by this technique of using relatively unmodified soils, thereby appreciably reducing costs. After summing up the principal existing methods of structural design on geotextile-reinforced structures, the authors describe a new method of calculation involving the limiting equilibrium, called the 'displacement method', and the Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussees CARTAGE programme derived from it. This method, based on the behaviour of the geotextile as an anchored membrane, has the advantage of taking into account the deformability of the geotextile, and hence the design can be modified in function of the stiffness J of the geotextile selected and the acceptable degree of deformation of the structure. An example of the calculation of design using the CARTAGE programme shows the incidence of different parameters which may be involved: the stiffness of the geotextile, the boundary conditions at the face, and local shearing.