ABSTRACT
The stability of embankments on soft foundation soil is often critical during the construction period; geosynthetic reinforcements placed across at foundation level enhance the short-term stability of an embankment over soft soil by preventing lateral sliding of the fill and extrusion of the foundation soil. For each of these limit states the associated reinforcement strength and bond length should be checked to ensure that the required tensile load can be generated in the reinforcement. While the consolidation of the soft soil develops, geosynthetics for basal reinforcement are progressively subject to out-of-plane deformations, which trigger the tensioned membrane mechanism. Hence the long-term design of geosynthetics requires the calculation of the final and constant tensioned membrane strength, which has to be compared with the long-term tensile strength of the geosynthetics for getting the associated long-term Factor of Safety.
