DESIGN SOFTWARE FOR GEOSYNTHETIC-REINFORCED SOIL STRUCTURES

Over the past 3 decades, geosynthetic reinforced soil structures have demonstrated safe performance while being economical. These reinforced structures are aesthetically pleasing and designers are tempted to use them in complex applications such as multi-tiered steep slopes and walls. Multi-tiered structures alleviate the required high strength of reinforcement, thus enabling the construction of reinforced slopes that are very high. The aim of this article is to show that pushing the design envelope can be done in a straightforward manner, extending conventional geotechnical principles and using suitable software to overcome involved and tedious computational processes.