Effects of reinforcement form on the behavior of geosynthetic reinforced sand

This paper studies the effects of reinforcement form on strength improvement of geosynthetic-reinforced sand through triaxial compression tests. Samples of sand reinforced with geosynthetics in three different forms, viz. horizontal layers, geocells, and randomly distributed discrete fibers are tested in triaxial compression and results are analyzed to understand the strength improvement in sand due to reinforcement in different forms. Three types of geosynthetics-geotextile, geogrid, and polyester film are used for reinforcing sand in layer form. Two types of geosynthetics-geotextile and polyester film are used in tests on geocells. Polyester film is used in all the three forms of reinforcement viz. planar, cellular, and discrete fiber reinforcement. Among the three forms of reinforcement, cellular form of reinforcement is found to be more effective in improving the strength. The discrete fiber form of reinforcement used in the studies is found to be inferior compared to the other two forms. The scale effects involved in the results obtained from the triaxial tests on small size samples of reinforced sand are discussed and the qualitative importance of the results is demonstrated through comparisons with theoretical computations. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.