ABSTRACT
Rockfall hazard in mountainous areas is often mitigated by placing reinforced soil embankments at the bottom of the slopes. The Terre Armée Company invested in an important research project for designing an innovative reinforced soil embankment, which had vertical facings and a relatively slender shape. High strength geosynthetic reinforcements assured its stability when subjected to impacts. During this project, real scale tests were performed on a 15 m long embankment with rectangular cross section and a foundation width that was almost half of its height. The structure successfully resisted the impacts from concrete blocks travelling with 5 MJ and 2 MJ kinetic energies. The deformed shape of the embankment showed that the internal geogrid reinforcements efficiently engaged a large soil volume far from the impact location. A good mobilization of the geogrids’ strength was observed through the strain gauges installed on them, which confirmed the validity of the design.
