Importance of PET geogrid in the enhancement of hill slope's safety factor: a finite element approach

Abstract

Slope stability analysis is crucial since the instability of the slope contributes to the failure of many buildings in hilly areas. Numerous ground improvement techniques are used to address this issue, including vertical drains, grouting, soil replacement, geosynthetic reinforcement, and piling. Geosynthetics are used more frequently to stabilize the hill slope as an alternative and cost-effective approach. The behavior of a geogrid reinforced slope was investigated in the current work utilizing 3D numerical analyses using the finite element program MIDAS GTS NX 2021 v1.1. Five types of geogrid are made up of different materials such as Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET), High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE), Low-Density Polyethylene (LDPE), Polypropylene (PP), and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) were considered to stabilize the slope. The percentage Increase in Factor of safety for PET, HDPE, LDPE, PVC and PP Geogrid reinforced slopes are 18%, 17.1%, 16.7%, 15.6% and 16.3% respectively as compared to Unreinforced slope. The percentage decrease in deformations for PET, HDPE, LDPE, PVC and PP Geogrid reinforced slopes are 97%, 78.4%, 64.79%, 78.17% and 49% respectively as compared to Unreinforced slope. The PET geogrid reinforced Slope provides a higher factor of safety and lower deformation among other geogrid reinforced Slopes because PET geogrid provides maximum pull-out resistance among different types of geogrid. Similarly, the strain induced in PET geogrid-reinforced slope is minimum among other geogrid-reinforced Slopes due to the lower stiffness of PET geogrid. Hence the slope reinforced with PET geogrid performed well compared to different geogrid-reinforced slopes.