Study of a small scale tyre-reinforced embankment

Tyre-reinforced soil, used to improve slope stability, retaining walls, etc., has an excellent mechanical performance, and has the capability of a wider application and of reducing waste disposal costs. This article studies the stress and deformation characteristics, as well as the influencing factors related to the reinforcing arrangement, through small scale model embankment tests. It is shown that tyre reinforcement highly improved the strength of the model embankments; much higher stresses were mobilised inside the soil mass (around 2 times higher in comparison with the unreinforced embankment). There is an obvious plastic flow in the unreinforced embankment, while the plastic zone, on the reinforced embankments, was difficult to determine. Comparisons between the vertical settlement of the embankments show that the settlement of the reinforced embankment is roughly half of the settlement of the unreinforced embankment, for the same vertical load applied. These results also show that the tests with the top layer of reinforcement nearer the load application area and a smaller distance between the intermediate layers have a better performance, particularly in dense fabrics. The location of the top reinforcement layer seems to dominate the failure modes of the reinforced and unreinforced embankments, the horizontal deformations and the location of the shear bands in the embankment.