On the enhanced confining pressure aproach to the mechanics of reinforced soil

Summary A review is presented of conceptual approaches that are currently in use for interpreting the operation of reinforced soil. The concepts of enhanced confining pressure and of reduced normal tensile strains are found to be closely related to current experimental and theoretical investigations as well as to the design methodologies available at present for reinforced soil applications. Focusing on the enhanced confining pressure concept, analytical expressions are developed that allow the estimation of the value of equivalent confining stress increase when the properties of soil and reinforcement and the state of stresses acting on a cylindrical reinforced soil element are known. The derived expressions can also be utilized for estimating the soil-reinforcement friction angle from the results of triaxial tests on cylindrical samples reinforced with horizontal layers of reinforcement.