Many kinds of reinforced earth walls have been developed and actually applied to such earth structures as retaining walls and embankments. The steel grid reinforced earth wall is a structure composed by steel grid reinforcements and backfill materials. In order to design the steel grid reinforced earth wall, a circular arc method is employed to examine both internal and external stabilities. In this paper, the authors present a basic design concept for steel grid reinforced earth walls, in which the bearing capacity type equation is used to estimate the pullout resistance of reinforced wire mat. Then a field pullout test is carried out to confirm the validity of the proposed design concept. Finally, some case histories of steel grid reinforced earth walls designed by the proposed design concept are demonstrated.
The steel grid reinforced earth wall was originally developed in U.S.A. and introduced to Japan in 1988. After then, it has been improved and modified in order to meet the Japanese regulations and circumstances so far. The number of construction of the steel grid reinforced earth wall has exceeded more than 2,000 cases and the total area of the constructed walls has reached about 500,000 square meters for these 12 years. The steel grid reinforced earth wall is structure composed by both steel grid reinforcements and back fill materials such as soils, crusher runs and stones. There are similar reinforced earth structures, but each reinforced earth structure has each different design method. In this paper, the authors present a basic design concept considering circular arc sliding surface for the steel grid reinforced earth wall. That is, in order to decide the layout and the dimension of steel grid reinforcement members, a circular arc method is employed, using the bearing factor to estimate the pullout resistance of reinforcement.
