Conversion of Geosynthetic Strain to Load Using Reinforcement Stiffness

Measurements indicative of the internal behavior of full-scale geosynthetic-reinforced soil walls typically consist of reinforcement strains and overall deformations. The focus of this paper is the development of a methodology that can be used to convert measured reinforcement strains to load using properly selected reinforcement stiffness values. The loading of the geosynthetic in the field can be simulated in the laboratory using creep, relaxation, and constant-rate-of-strain tests. It was found that in-isolation creep stiffness data is sufficiently accurate to estimate reinforcement loads from strain measurements, at least for geogrids and most woven geotextiles. The approach is validated using data from carefully instrumented wall case histories in which reinforcement loads were measured directly and compared to loads estimated from measured reinforcement strain data.