Geosynthetic-Reinforced Soils Under Repeated Loading: A Review and Comparative Design Study

Many types of geosynthetic-reinforced soil are subjected to repeated or cyclic loading. In transportation infrastructures such loading conditions occur in pavements supported by reinforced soil retaining walls, reinforced soil bridge abutments, reinforced roadways, or railway foundations. Insufficient knowledge on the mid- and long-term performance of geosynthetics and on soil-reinforcement interaction under such conditions might be considered a hurdle to their use as reinforcement in permanent earth structures. In this paper, information on the performance of geosynthetic-reinforced soil structures and the durability of geosynthetic materials under repeated or cyclic loading is summarized. Semi-empirical methods are currently available to design geosynthetic-reinforced unpaved roads under traffic loading. A spreadsheet program was used in order to perform sensitivity analyses on three widely used design methods for unpaved roads. Based on the analytical results, the limitations of the currently available experimental database are discussed and research needs identified.