A generalized mechanical model for geosynthetic-reinforced foundation soil

Abstract The present paper describes a mechanical model for idealizing the settlement response of a geosynthetic-reinforced compressible granular fill-soft soil system, by representing each sub-system by commonly used mechanical elements such as stretched, rough, elastic membrane, Pasternak shear layer, Winkler springs and dashpot. The model considers, simultaneously, several factors governing its behaviour, such as the compressibility of the granular fill, the compaction of granular fill, the time-dependent behaviour of soft soil and pre-stress in the geosynthetic reinforcement, besides the material and soil-geosynthetic interface characteristics. The response function of the model has been derived for strip loading in plane strain conditions. The resulting equations, in nondimensional form, are solved using an iterative finite difference method. The parametric studies carried out show the effects of various parameters on the settlement response.