PERFORMANCE OF REINFORCED EMBANKMENT ON SOFT BANGKOK CLAY WITH HIGH-STRENGTH GEOTEXTILE REINFORCEMENT

In order to study the improvement of embankment stability on soft ground, two test embankments were constructed to failure. One test embankment was reinforced with high-strength, nonwoven geotextile as base reinforcement. The reinforcement consisted of one layer of high-strength geotextile placed directly on the natural ground surface at the bottom of the embankment fill. For comparison, another full-scale, unreinforced embankment using the same fill material as that of the reinforced one was also constructed to failure at the adjacent site. The height at failure of the reinforced embankment was 6 m while that of the unreinforced embankment was 4 m. This paper presents the instrumentation program, construction procedure, monitored data, and stability analysis of the test embankments. The study indicated that the high-strength, nonwoven geotextile as base reinforcement, can considerably increase the ultimate height of embankments on soft clay. It was also shown that the rupture occurred at large deformation of foundation subsoils.