Soil Nailing: An Effective Slope Stabilization Technique

The present chapter discusses the soil nailing technique as an effective stabilization measure for slopes, excavations, rail or road embankments, tunnels and retaining walls. Different aspects of the technique such as favorable ground conditions, advantages and limitations over other methods have been reported. Further, different installation process, failure modes of soil nailed structures, design philosophies, effects of various construction parameters on the design method has been discussed in detail. The pullout response of the soil nail is the critical parameter for the soil nail design. Analytical, numerical, field and lab testing procedures are usually used to determine the pullout capacity of the soil nail. A chronological literature review examines the influence of various parameters such as grouting pressure, overburden pressure, soil dilation, degree of saturation, roughness of the nail surface and borehole on pullout capacity of soil nail. A comparative study based on different types of experimental setup reported in the literature along with the innovative pullout system developed at CSIR-CBRI for determination of pullout capacity of soil nail has also been summarized. The last section briefly describes the recent advancements in the soil nail technique and its beneficial effects over the conventional soil nailing system.