A Detailed Study on the Analysis and Design of Geotextile Reinforced Earth Embankments

Abstract

The design of a steep reinforced slope with an adequate Factor of Safety (FoS) is a classical geotechnical problem. While designing a reinforced soil slope, it is necessary to accurately determine the tensile force to be resisted by the reinforcement to achieve the target FoS value and the length of the geotextile reinforcement to be provided at the top and bottom of the embankment and perform all the required safety checks. This paper presents an MS Excel spreadsheet using Visual Basic Programming that can be used to perform all the analyses required to design geotextile reinforced soil slopes, considering static and seismic loading conditions. This spreadsheet is capable of searching many slip surfaces repeatedly using Bishop's simplified method to determine the maximum tensile force to be resisted by the reinforcement, its top and bottom lengths, and performs deep-seated failure analysis to identify slip surfaces beyond the reinforced zone. This paper reports the results of an illustrative example to highlight all the above mentioned issues. The results were also compared with the design charts reported in previous studies. The proposed platform can successfully perform all the necessary analyses to design both homogenous and non-homogenous embankments with geotextile reinforcements.