Geotextile reinforced brick faced retaining walls

This paper describes a new method of retaining wall construction that combines the reinforced earth technique with a conventional brick wall. Although this type of construction is based on the original reinforced earth construction concept it has some important modifications as it uses short geotextile sheets as reinforcement and has a rigid face. The behaviour of geotextile reinforced brick faced retaining walls was investigated using model walls which were built, backfilled and then surcharged. The results show that even short lengths of reinforcement can can significantly increase the load capacity of a brick retaining wall. A visible front face crack at about mid-height develops during surcharging prior to collapse which always occurs far less quickly than on unreinforced walls, taking several seconds. Copyright (C) 1996 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.