ABSTRACT
Soil nailing is an in situ ground reinforcement technique that improves the stability of earth structures by transferring loads imposed on them to the ground principally through the mobilization of tension in the soil nails. Soil nails are basically passive, unstressed structural elements upon installation where tensile forces are generated only when ground deformation occurs giving rise to relative movement and frictional interaction between the ground and the soil nails. The tensile forces in soil nails are primarily developed through the frictional interaction between the soil nails and the ground, with reactions provided by soil nail heads and facing as well. In this chapter, the mechanism of a soil nailed earth structure and nail-ground interaction is discussed. The key factors that govern the behavior of a nailed structure, including stability and deformation, are identified and investigated. They include the orientation and inclination of soil nails, bending and shear resistance of soil nails, nail heads, and facing, as well as pullout resistance. The robustness and reliability of soil nails are also examined using state-of-the-art probability theory.
