Investigation on the effect of interface temperature on soil-reinforcement interaction mechanism by pullout test

Abstract

To investigate the effect of interface temperature on the soil-reinforcement interaction mechanism, a series of pullout tests were conducted considering different types of reinforcement (geogrid and non-woven geotextile), backfill (dry sand, wet sand, and clay), and six interface temperatures. The test results indicate that at interface temperatures of 0 °C and above, reinforcement failure didn't occur during the pullout tests, whereas it predominantly occurred at subzero temperatures. Besides, the pullout resistance for the same soil-reinforcement interface gradually decreased as the interface temperature rose. At a given positive interface temperature, the pullout resistance between wet sand and reinforcement was significantly higher than that of the clay-reinforcement interface but lower than that of the dry sand-reinforcement interface. Compared with geotextile reinforcements, geogrids were more difficult to pull out under the same interface temperature and backfill conditions. In addition, the lag effect in the transfer of tensile forces within the reinforcements was significantly influenced by the type of soil-reinforcement interface and the interface temperature. Finally, the progressive deformation mechanism along the reinforcement length at different interface temperatures was analyzed based on the strain distribution in the reinforcement.