Displacement Monitoring at Verrand High Reinforced Soil Structure - Reinforced Soil Engineering: Advances in Research and Practice - page 131

In all cases, the highest displacement gradients occur when filling
immediately above the measuring points. Further filling produces additional
displacements in a short time, but displacement gradients are, in this case,
smaller. It was observed that, whenever some time has delayed from the last
previous loading, any additional load produces a sudden reaction of the structure,
so that displacements upon loading develop more quickly.
The shape of the displacement curves suggests that the expected
displacements in the next 10 and 100 years will be only slightly larger than the
present ones. These displacements are actually less than those predictable from
the displacement velocity curves.
The discrepancy may be the consequence of the fact that the short-term
deformations and creep, both consequences of each loading increment, cannot be
separated within the relatively simple operations on the Asaoka's curves.
Consideration must also be given to the fact that, after some time, creep
displacements between two following readings become smaller

than the

surveying accuracy. More data are necessary to support this method of

interpretating deformation measurements.

9 CONCLUSIONS

Displacement monitoring is a key point in the design of HRSS, on account that
the deformation process may take years. The reinforced soil is a material built on
site, and its properties can hardly be defined with laboratory testing and analytical
tools only. It is important to assess the actual behavior of the structure since early
construction phases to make possible a sound prediction of

the final

displacements.
Displacement velocity plots as well as Asaoka's method are well-
established procedures, which appear suitable for describing the behavior of
reinforced soil structures, too, especially high structures. A proper theoretical
analysis, which could be referred as the pseudo-consolidation of reinforced soils,
would require comparing data coming from numerous and different HRSS.

REFERENCES

A Asaoka. Observational procedure of settlement prediction. Soils and Foundation, The
Japanese Society of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, 18(4): 87-101,
1978.
D Cazzuffi, E Venesia, M Rinaldi, A Zocca. The mechanical properties of geotextiles:
Italian standard and interlaboratory test comparison. Third Intl. Conference on