Geogrid Reinforced Brick Buildings for Earthquake Disaster Mitigations

In the event of a severe earthquake, the walls of brick buildings experience in-plane shear and out-of-plane bending, leading to diagonal crack and corner failure respectively. In this study, an experimental investigation was carried to observe the above damages on brick masonry buildings reinforced with geogrid embedded in bed joint mortar of the walls. It was observed that the geogrid reinforced brick panels showed better shear strength, lateral strength, ductility, etc. A qualitative comparison was made using a sinusoidal shake table test on a one-fourth single-room building model consisting of two sets of corner walls with and without geogrid reinforcement. It was observed that the corner wall without reinforcement showed crack initiation at 0.45g and complete collapse with over toppling of the transverse wall at 0.90g, while no sign of damages for the corner walls strengthened with geogrid reinforcement for any level of shaking.

Geosynthetic Reinforced Fill Material for Tennessee Bridge Approach Slab Support

The approach slab is constructed at bridge ends to serve as a smooth transition from the highway pavement to the bridge deck. However, motorists usually complain about a sudden change in elevation (bump) at the highway/approach slab (H/S) joint that causes a potential hazard for public safety, damage to vehicles, and rider discomfort. This paper develops a finite element (FE) analysis for the differential settlement at the H/S joint when supported by a strip footing that sits on compacted layers of soil embankment with uniaxial geogrid reinforcement. A parametric study was conducted to select the optimum design that consists of five geogrid layers equally spaced within a depth of 2 [Formula: see text] below the strip footing, where [Formula: see text] is the width of the footing. The inclusion of geogrid reinforcement did not only enhance the ultimate bearing stress of the strip footing but also redistributed the vertical loads over a wider region of soil embankment and thus reduced settlement. A case study is also presented for modeling the performance of a preliminary design proposed by Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) for the retrofit of bridge ends. The FE analysis showed a 30%–40% improvement in the ultimate bearing stress of the strip footing when the geogrid reinforcement proposed by TDOT is extended to a depth of 1.5 [Formula: see text] below the footing.

Characterisation of Geogrid and Waste Tyres as Reinforcement Materials in Railway Track Beds

The engineering behaviour of ballast is an important factor to determine the stability and safety of railway tracks. This paper examines the stress–strain, shear strength, peak deflection stress and reinforcement strength ratio of different reinforcement materials and reinforcement locations in ballast track bed layers based on large scale static triaxial shear tests. The results show that geogrid and waste tyre reinforcement have a significant effect on the peak deviator stress of railway track bed layers and the stress–strain relationship is strain-hardened. The peak deviator stress and shear strength of geogrid reinforcement are greater under the same conditions compared with waste tyres. The reinforcement of geogrid and waste tires increases the shear strength of the track bed significantly. The more layers of geogrid reinforcement, the more energy is required for the deformation of the track bed. The energy required for deformation is greater in the centre of the waste tyre than in the other reinforced forms, and the energy required for deformation is minimal in the fully reinforced form. Excessive tyre reinforcement changes the stiffness of the track bed layer, leading to an increase in the settlement rate. The reinforcement strength ratio between geogrid and waste tyre increases significantly with the increasing of the confining pressure and reinforcement layers. Moreover, the reinforcement strength ratio of the geogrid is significantly higher than that of the waste tyre.

Shallow Layer Destruction Law of Expansive Soil Slope under Rainfall and the Application of Geogrid Reinforcement

A large number of instability cases and laboratory tests of expansive soil slopes show that its shallow layer destruction happens because of the insufficient shear strength under the usual action of low stress and repeated dry-wet cycles. We can obtain the strength nonlinear distribution law fitted by generalized power function based on a series of shear strength tests of expansive soil considering low stress and can construct the numerical model considering the nonlinear strength distribution by FISH, to realize the shear strength dynamic distribution with the vertical stress. Based on the numerical model, the whole-process contrastive analysis has been conducted on the stress field, the slip surface depth, and the seepage field of plain soil and reinforced expansive soil cut slope under different rainfall conditions. Besides, the mechanics characteristic of the geogrid under various design schemes has been compared and analyzed. A further explanation has been given for the expansive soil cut slope prone to shallow layer failure after rainfall and on the effect of geogrid reinforcement. The numerical results provide a reference for slope stability analysis in rainy expansive soil areas.

Physical stabilization of expansive subgrade soil using locally produced geogrid material

This paper illustrates application of a locally produced geogrid material for strength improvement of expansive subgrade soil. Samples of black, soft soil predominating the study area were collected from south western parts of Modjo town, inside the rift valley region of central parts of Ethiopia. X-Ray diffraction as well as index property tests were executed to identify and categorize the expansiveness of the highly plastic soft soil. The effects of two locally manufactured geogrid reinforcement materials; namely, polypropylene (PP) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) on the California bearing ratio (CBR) values of the expansive soil have been investigated. The test results indicated that the use of the geogrid reinforcement can significantly improve the bearing capacity of weak subgrade soil. The soaked CBR of the untreated soil sample, which was about 2.98%, was able to be raised to 10.16% and 7.48% by the application of PP and HDPE type of geogrid respectively, that were placed at 0.35H from the top of specimen. The research demonstrated the potential of using locally produced geogrid material for the improvement of weak subgrade soil.