Improvement of the stability of a vertical geotextile reinforced earth wall backfilled with low strength clayey soil

Despite many past studies of clayey geosynthetic reinforced earth walls (GREWs) conducted using geotechnical centrifuge modeling, none have examined the adverse effects of low strength clayey backfill with a high water content resulting from consecutive days of heavy rainfall and poor drainage on the stability of a clayey GREW. In this study a series of centrifugal model tests for vertical geosynthetic reinforced earth walls (VGREWs) was performed to investigate the effectiveness of reducing the reinforcement spacing on the stability of low strength clayey VGREW. The reinforcement spacing for the clayey VGREW was 0.25 m or less with the reinforcement length being 0.71 times the wall height H. The testing to ensure stability under the worst weather conditions was done in the Linkou area. It was found that for a low strength clayey VGREW, the pattern of deformation of its wall face depends upon the reinforcement spacing.