TENSILE REINFORCEMENTS OF ROAD EMBANKMENTS IN SERVICE LIMIT STATE

Though the "reinforced soil" was invented in the early sixties in France, the use of tensile reinforcements in modern road embankments is fairly recent technology in Finland. Earlier use of fully synthetic exported plastic reinforcements was common. The design of structures is mainly executed in the ultimate limit state because of the difficulties of design in the service limit state and because of high strains of plastic reinforcements. The material properties of domestic wood and semi-domestic steel are possibly adequate for both design methods. The main purpose of the study was to identify stresses and deformations for four different type of reinforced road embankments and the maximum stresses and strains of these tensile reinforce-ments. The study was performed using the FEM-method employing the computer software, ABAQUS. The secondary purpose of the study was to assess the material costs for the tensile reinforcements. The first part of the study consists of literature research which consists of the following three sections. 1. Friction and dilatation of soil, 2. Soil-reinforcement interaction and 3. FEM.