ABSTRACT
Soil nailing technique is extensively used for the stabilization of natural slopes and walls due to its unnumbered benefits viz. ease of installation in congested areas, flexibility, and a remarkable performance under seismic conditions. Various literature have highlighted the effective use of soil nailing technique in the stabilization of slopes, cuts, landslides, and excavations. Recently, researchers have improved the efficiency of the conventional soil nails by adding a set of helices along the length of the nail. The novel soil nail is termed as the helical soil nail. In the present study, the reliability-based analysis of a wall stabilized using the novel helical soil nails, is performed using the pseudo–static framework. The critical mode of failure for a helical soil nailed wall viz. the pullout mode, is considered in the formulation of the limit state function. The probability of failure (P f ) of the wall is approximated using the conventional sampling-based Monte–Carlo Simulation (MCS). The random variables include the internal friction angle of soil (ϕ) and the unit weight (γ). The P f for a conventional soil nailed wall is compared with that of the helical soil nailed wall, to evaluate the efficacy of the helical soil nailed wall. The results depict a decrease in P f when helical soil nails are used as a stabilization measure in place of the conventional soil nails. The influence of the randomness of input parameters is showcased by plotting a graph of P f against the coefficient of variation (COV) of ϕ. The plot indicates a decrement in the stability of the wall with the increasing randomness which demonstrates the need for reliability analysis of the helical soil nailed walls. The paper also discusses the effect of nail inclination angle on the stability of the helical soil nailed wall. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the proposed method is original.
