Large-Scale Reinforced Clay Walls Backfilled with Clay at Cheng Kung University - Reinforced Soil Engineering: Advances in Research and Practice - page 194

Figure 8 Precipitation recorded by the weather station adjacent to the NCKU walls.

the top of reinforcement for about 0.9m high hardly increases the tensile strains
in the reinforcement (Fig. 9) . In fact, small reductions in the tensile strains were
measured for lower layers of reinforcement. Based on the tensile strains
measurement for the reinforcement at h 1.89m, the tensile strains developed

during the compaction of one lift upon the reinforcement were approximately 1%
to 4%, and those due to the subsequent construction from 1.97m to 2.77 m high
were approximately 1.5% to 2%. It means that 40% to 67% of the total strains
developed for the whole construction process has been mobilized during the
compaction of one layer upon the reinforcement. A similar result has been
reported by Schlosser (1990). In this study, 70% to 95% of the total strains that
developed during the process of construction were generated during the
compaction of one soil layer upon the reinforcement. The smaller value obtained
in the present study may be attributable to the relatively smaller compaction
energy employed.
The tensile strain increase in 10 months since completion is shown in
Fig. 10. The increase of tensile strains for most of the geosynthetic composite
reinforcements was not larger than 2%. Because the strain gauges deteriorated
very fast, potentiometers with minimum readings of 0.01mm were connected
to steel wires to measure the movement of specific targets attached to the
reinforcement. Targets at one end of the steel wire were spaced at 300mm
horizontally for four reinforcement layers in each wall.
The measurement of reinforcement strain using potentiometers restarted
at the beginning of the first infiltration test, which was about 11 months (about
330 days) after the completion of the walls. The increment of tensile strains for

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