FAILURE PATTERN OF REINFORCED SOIL SLOPES

It is known that investigating the failure pattern is important for the design and construction monitoring of reinforced soil slope. In this paper, reinforced soil slopes with different reinforcements and soils are studied using centrifuge modeling. During the modeling, failure patterns are drawn and compared. Results show that the reinforced soil slopes are generally able to maintain better integrity and are not likely to collapse suddenly. Cracks may first occur near the slope surface. Therefore, significant cracks on the top of the slope may always imply that hidden cracks near the slope surface have also occurred. Generally, larger reinforcement modulus can bring better reinforcing effect. However, if the strength of the interface cannot be improved appropriately, it can be useless to indefinitely increase the modulus of the reinforcement once it is large enough.