Prestressed geosynthetic reinforced soil by compaction

Prestressed reinforced concrete is a state of the art construction method. In this paper prestressed geotextile reinforced soil is presented. It is already known that the building up process of a geogrid reinforced embankment is an important factor of the building’s long time performance. Deformations in the soil need to occur to activate tensile forces in the geogrid by soil-grid interaction. The more deformation in the soil and the better interaction between soil and geogrid the higher are the forces in the reinforcement. To avoid high deformations after the building up process of the embankment it is important to activate the tensile forces in the geogrid during the compaction respectively construction process. Prestressing the geogrid reinforcement with the help and as a result of compaction is therefore researched and demonstrated by using a mesoscopic discrete element method (DEM) analysis with the Particle Flow Code in three dimensions. Qualitatively prestressed respectively prestrained reinforcing as a result of compaction is numerically analyzed and validated by a small scale laboratory test. In this paper the method of prestressing the geogrid by compaction is presented and the performance of a specific compaction advice is qualitatively confirmed.