Behaviour of two reinforced test embankments on soft clay

摘要

The paper presents the behaviour of two reinforced test embankments built on a normally consolidated soft clay deposit underlying a top sand layer. The embankments were constructed close to undrained conditions in about 60 days. The embankments were well instrumented, including measurements of tension forces in the reinforcement. The mobilised tension forces in the reinforcements were shown to increase with embankment height and larger values of tension forces were measured in the embankment built on a shallower clay layer. The critical failure surfaces obtained in limit equilibrium stability analyses were close to the observed field failure surfaces. These analyses used measured reinforcement forces and resulted in Bjerrum correction factors around μ = 0.60 for the two embankments. These analyses considered the measured reinforcement forces and three-dimensional effects. Consistent correlations were obtained between embankment loadings, factors of safety, measured reinforcement forces and inclinometer readings.