State of the Practice: Past, Current, and Future Perspectives of Reinforced Soil Retaining Structures in Turkey - Reinforced Soil Engineering: Advances in Research and Practice - page 148

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State of the Practice: Past, Current,
and Future Perspectives of
Reinforced Soil Retaining Structures
in Turkey
Muhannad Ismeik
AI-Isra University, Amman, Jordan
Erol Guler
Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey
1 INTRODUCTION
The concept of reinforced soil was first applied in Turkey with the Web-Soil and
reinforced earth technologies. These types of modern technologies were mainly
introduced to Turkish engineers with the highway construction, which started as
early as the 1970s, but got extensive during the 1980s. The technology—
approved by the Turkish Highway Administration and observed by other
engineers as being successful and economical—found itself application
opportunities on other construction sites. Geosynthetic reinforcements were
introduced in the construction of reinforced slopes with the overwrap technique.
Both geotextiles and geogrids were used as reinforcing elements for the
reinforced slope projects. Most of these applications were used on projects where
public visibility was not possible; however, a few exceptions exist. An
experimental wall, built in 1993, was the first geosynthetic wall where the backfill
consists of lime treated clay. The objective of that wall was to investigate the
replacement of granular material with an improved cohesive backfill with
emphasis on real measurements and observation of field behavior. The first
geosynthetic reinforced segmental retaining wall was constructed during the
summer of 1997. It was a project realized for the Highway Administration. It was
used to elevate an existing road to pass over a tunnel portal. Generally, this wall