Modelling the displacements of geosynthetics reinforced geostructures

Natural and anthropogenic slopes are frequently reinforced with geosynthetics to improve their global performance towards exhibited displacements and potential failure mechanisms. Design of reinforced slopes are mainly based on limit equilibrium methods while more sophisticated stress-strain analyses are rare in the practice and performed only for research purposes. The paper presents an advanced numerical (FEM and FDM) modeling of two complementary cases: a theoretical reinforced vertical cut without external loads and a real highway embankment reinforced with geogrids. In the former case, similar results are obtained irrespective of the simulated construction procedure of the slope. Conversely, for the highway embankment, due to the complexity of slope geometry and ground stratigraphy, the numerical results highly depends on the numerical simulation procedure and all the construction stages must be adequately simulated also to correctly assess the potential failure mechanism.