A quasi-2D exploration of optimum design settings for geotextile-reinforced sand in assistance with PIV analysis of failure mechanism

Many earlier studies were focused on testing different types of geosynthetics to investigate effect of reinforce-ment on bearing capacity, but the effect of tensile strength on the failure mechanism has not been examined sufficiently. Within this scope, a test setup was prepared to apply strip loads on densely compacted reinforced sand under the plane strain condition. The tank containing the reinforced sand was a rectangular prism with perfect transparency, and its interior dimensions were 960 x 200 x 650 mm3. Firstly, optimum values of design variables (depth of first sheet, length and number of sheets, space between sheets, tensile strength of sheets) for the woven geotextile reinforced sand were determined experimentally. Then, the failure mechanisms of the soil, which were reinforced with geotextiles of different tensile strengths, were observed and analyzed with particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique. Consequently, the failure mechanism of the sand with a single geotextile reinforcement was similar to general shear failure of unreinforced soil. Contrarily, the failure surfaces were deeper and longer. Additionally, the deep-footing mechanism reached out large depth in the case of four rein-forcement layers. The failure mechanism converted into a punching type due to a hypothetic increase in the bearing depth of reinforcement.