EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL STUDY OF ARTIFICIALLY FIBER REINFORCED SAND-CEMENT SLOPES LOADED WITH A FOOTING

摘要

The main scope of this research is to investigate experimentally and numerically, the behavior of both sand and artificially cemented sand slopes stabilized with randomly distributed fiber reinforcement, and loaded with strip footing. The footing was placed on the horizontal top surface of the slope and loaded concentrically for a wide range of slope angles and different footing locations from the crest of the slope. Footings subjected to eccentric loads are covered in a preceding paper. A total of 45-plane strain model footing tests were carried out to evaluate the efficiency of using randomly distributed fiber reinforcement and/or cement inclusion as a stabilized materials on the response of sandy slopes under vertical concentric loads. In addition, a series of compaction tests, drained triaxial compression tests, and unconfined compression tests were performed to investigate the compaction characteristics, the strength and stiffness parameters of both artificially cemented sand and fiber reinforced cemented sand specimens, with particular attention given to the influence of cement and fiber contents. The results of these preliminary tests are used to provide parameters that will be used in the numerical analysis of slopes. Also, to provide information that help understand the overall behavior of the fiber reinforced cemented soil, numerical analysis was conducted using advanced nonlinear elasto-plastic model incorporated with a plane-strain finite element code. The numerical model was calibrated using experimental model results, and used to complement the parametric study.