Effects of Reinforcement on Soil Arching Development Under Localized Static Loading

Abstract:

In this paper， plane-strain trapdoor tests were conducted to investigate the effects of reinforcement on the soil arching development under localized static loading， by using analogical soil made of aluminum rods as the backfill and by using four different reinforcement arrangements. Test results show that the use of reinforcement significantly minimizes soil arching under self-weight and localized static loading. Soil arching with reinforcement degrades greatly in unloading stages due to the existence of reinforcement， which was different from that without reinforcement. When the total reinforcement stiffness is the same， two low stiffness reinforcement layers with a backfill layer of certain thickness in between promotes soil arching. A soil arching analytical solution was proposed to predict the additional vertical stresses induced by localized static loading.