Recent Experiences of Reinforced Soil Retaining Structures in China - Reinforced Soil Engineering: Advances in Research and Practice - page 161

different normal stresses on the soil. One end of geotextile buried in soil is fixed
in the middle of the sliding plate and is pulled out in different directions in tests.
From a series of pullout tests under different normal stresses and different
pullout directions, the load-displacement relationship can be expressed as

d

p ¼ ð 1 Þ

a þ bd

where parameters a and b are functions of the angle between sliding plate and
initial orientation of geotextile b, and normal stress s.
In the stability analysis of the reinforced soil structure, different slip
surfaces are chosen, and then their safety factors are calculated by Bishop's
method and considering Eq. (1). The slip surface with a minimum safety factor
should be the most probable one.
A laboratory model reinforced retaining wall test was performed in a test
box with acrylic sidewalls. Vertical load was applied through a rectangular metal
strip. Figure 2 shows the shape of the wall in different stages in the test. The
safety factor calculated with the proposed method is 1.02, while the one
calculated with Rankine's theory is 0.61. Obviously,

the former is more

reasonable (Wei Yifeng and Li Guangxin, 1996).

Figure 2 Deformation of geotextile in different test stages.