Centrifuge Model Studies on the Load-Bearing Characteristics of Geosynthetic-Reinforced Soil Abutment

Recent years, the application of Geosynthetic-Reinforced Soil (GRS) abutment in bridge engineering has widely received attention. As load-bearing structure, load-bearing characteristics are important indicators of GRS abutment performance. In this work, two plane strain centrifugal models of GRS abutments using different reinforcement were loaded at 10 gravities in order to study the bearing capacity of GRS abutment. Results show that the abutment using polypropylene geotextile as reinforcement kept stable at 1350 kPa, while for the abutment using window screen as reinforcement, failure occurred at 800 kPa. The ultimate bearing capacity of the two abutment models is greater than the calculated value specified in the guide. Different reinforcement stiffness leads to different vertical settlement, lateral deformation and reinforcement strain of the two models. The results of vertical settlement show that the vertical settlement of both models are less than the expected value of the guideline. As load increasing, the point of maximum lateral deformation shifted from top of the abutment to 1/5 height of the abutment from the top. While the point of maximum reinforcement strain shifted from bottom to 1/5 of the abutment height from top.