Effect of repair with soil nails on damaged reinforced soil wall
Effect of repair with soil nails on damaged reinforced soil wall
It is known that reinforced soil walls have higher earthquake resistance compared to conventional retaining walls. However, it is reported that some reinforced soil walls were damaged by large earthquakes such as the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Geogrid reinforced soil walls (GRSW) usually use only geogrids as reinforcing members. But if it is thought that the stability of the damaged GRSW is not enough with only geogrids after the earthquake and the damaged GRSW needs to be repaired, it is expected to add the soil nails afterwards. To investigate the effect of soil nails in repairing damaged geogrid reinforced soil walls (GRSWs), a series of model shaking table tests on GRSWs was carried out to simulate earthquake damage by the first shaking, repair with soil nails, and the second shaking to estimate seismic stability of the repaired GRSW. The results showed that the seismic resistance of the damaged GRSW was improved by adding soil nails. The effectiveness of adding soil nails in improving seismic resistance was found to depend on the length of the soil nails and the degree of damage to the GRSW. Soil nails which were longer than geogrids suppressed the formation of vertical shear plane behind the geogrid reinforced zone. Therefore, seismic stability of the damaged GRSW increased by long soil nails.
Jiro Kuwano; Shinya Okazaki; Yuuka Yoshida
11th International Conference on Physical Modelling in Geotechnics (ICPMG2026)
Session 3: Resilient geotechnical infrastructure
https://doi.org/10.53243/ICPMG2026-366