Geosynthetic-reinforced soil retaining walls as important permanent structures

For the last decade, geosynthetic-reinforced soil retaining walls with a full-height rigid facing cast-in-place by staged construction procedures were constructed in Japan to a total length exceeding 20 km as important permanent structures mainly for railways. These include retaining walls for embankments, bridge abutments, a wall backfilled with a nearly saturated clay constructed on a thick very soft clay deposit, a wall which survived a very severe earthquake, and those constructed to support bullet train tracks. A new method to make reinforced soil very stiff by preloading and prestressing is also described.