A Numerical Study on Geotextile-Reinforced Slopes

In recent times, use of geosynthetics has gained widespread acceptance and has been used as reinforcing component in numerous geotechnical engineering structures. During construction of geotextile-reinforced slope, it become essential to maintain certain value of factor of safety for each stages of construction. In this paper, a numerical study on slopes reinforced with and without geotextiles is presented. To capture the trend of development of axial forces in the geotextile layers under plastic analysis, four different slope inclinations (β) (i.e., β = 45°, 60°, 75° and 90°) with slope height of 7 m were selected. Reinforced slopes were provided with equal number of geotextile layers along with uniform length (Lg) of 6.4 m. The uniform vertical spacing (Sv) of 1.0 m between any two geotextile layers was chosen. To simulate staged construction method which is adopted at site, finite element tool PLAXIS 2D was used for stability analysis. The construction of slopes was simulated in seven stages of equal height for all the slope inclinations. The results showed that minimum axial forces were developed at the top most geotextile layer for all the four slope inclinations (β = 45°, 60°, 75°, and 90°). Maximum axial forces were observed to develop in all geotextile layers for the slope having β = 90° when it compared to other slope inclinations. With an increase in axial stiffness (EA) of geotextile layers by 100%, it was noticed that only 16% increase in axial force at the bottommost geotextile layer for the slope with 75° inclination.