Static performance of geosynthetic reinforced soil walls with peripheral soil-cement mixtures

Recently, much effort has been devoted to improving the performance of geosynthetic reinforced walls under various stress conditions. In this research, the effect of using cemented mixed soil as a backfill material on the static response of Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil (ORS) walls is studied. For this, numerical models based on a finite difference code are made according to one of the Royal Military College's (RMC) full-scale test walls with the segmental facing. Different arrangements of soil reinforcement are considered in the presence of cemented sandy soil and sandy soil alone. In the cement-treated approach, each reinforcement layer is surrounded by a 30-cm cemented sand soil. The results show that the application of cement-treated sandy soil decreases the maximum deformation of the wall by as much as 75% compared to the cases where untreated sandy soil is used. Moreover, by applying cemented soil around reinforcements, the reinforcement forces reduce considerably. Therefore, increasing the number of reinforcement layers in the backfill will decrease the face wall deformation and the reinforcement forces, which are not cost effective in many situations. It is also suggested that the application of the cement-treated technique can be an efficient cost-saving method, compared to common GRS walls. (C) 2020 Sharif University of Technology. All rights reserved.