Soil Nailing With Flexible Structural Facing - Design and Exp
Soil Nailing With Flexible Structural Facing - Design and Exp
Soil Nailing With Flexible Structural Facing - Design and Exp
Abstract
Officine Maccaferri has developed BIOS, a simplified as well as realistic design approach
for the calculation of the flexible structural facing of soil nailing. The approach shows that
the most important property of this kind of application is membrane stiffness of the mesh.
With the procedure of BIOS is possible to reduce the timing of design and get a cost
effective intervention. Anyway the designer judgment is required for a better evaluation of
the critical factors like the slope morphology, the admissible displacement and settlement,
the presence of water and erosion processes.
Keywords
Soil nailing Flexible structural facing
Preliminary Remarks are then grouted and fixed soundly to the ground for their
entire length (nailing). The frequency and the length of the
For years the wire mesh has been frequently utilized as flexible nails must be calculated in accordance with EN 1997 1.
structural facing on soil nailing. The system, known in technical The nailing mobilises friction forces along the entire length
literature as structural flexible facing (Phear et al. 2005), surely and contributes to the improvement of the stability conditions
offers aesthetic advantages and can be successfully utilized over when there are displacements in the soil (Schlosser 2002; Soulas
all for the stabilization of slopes with vegetation. The present 1991; BS 8006; Byrne et al. 1998). The stabilizing friction
paper analyses the general behaviour of the flexible facing and forces are passively generated when the soil rupture starts.
proposes the new calculation approach BIOS (best improve- The protection of the exposed surface of the soil
ment of slopes) which has already widely utilized by the reinforced by the nails is obtained with the facing, the aim
Officine Maccaferri for the design of cuts and natural slopes. of which is to hold the soil between the nails, prevent erosion
phenomena and assume an aesthetic function. Obviously the
facing, within the limits of its intrinsic deformability, can
The Concept of Nailing only collaborate with the passive action of the nails (Fig. 1).
In facts, it is not at all comparable to a stiff structure (e.g.:
The aim of soil nailing is to improve the soil stability when shotcrete or precast elements), which limits the soil displace-
there are unfavourable stability conditions. The stability is ment in an optimal way. The preferential ambit of applica-
achieved by inserting reinforcement bars in the soil, which tion of the structural flexible facing is the natural slope,
where there are not considerable variations of the stress
state and a vegetal protection already lives.
Generally, on slope steeper than 60 the facing has a
G. Giacchetti (*) A. Grimod
Alpigeo Consultants, Belluno, via Barozzi 45, Bologna, Italy temporary character. Anyway the design of the flexible
e-mail: [email protected] structural facing requires a certain attention in order to
D. Cheer minimize the problems related to the intrinsic properties of
Technichal Department, Officine Maccaferri, Bologna, Italy the meshes and to the limits of their applications.
the input data, the reliability of the results and the velocity of
calculation.
BIOS develops the analysis of the facing in four stages
(in appendix there is the calculation procedure):
1. Verification of the input data: this first stage analyses the
slope behaviour in the short term in order to verify that
the safety factor of the slope between two nails is greater
than 1.0 (Fs > 1.0). The procedure allows to control the
quality of the geotechnical input data and, in case, to
correct them, adjusting the geotechnical parameters or
changing the nail spacing.
2. Verification of the instable volume: the software
simulates the soil softening which happens in the long
term. For that, the progressive reduction of the resis-
tance parameters c0 e j0 is carried out up to the resisting
Fig. 5 Displacement models with the segments of deformed mesh
forces are equals to the driving forces (FS ¼ 1). The
procedure allows to determine the maximum instable
volume of soil which can move down between the development of simplified calculation approach. Further
nails (Fig. 2). investigations are needed for a better comprehension of the
3. Ultimate limit state: the maximum volume of soil that can interaction between nail and mesh and for implementing
move between the nails (see previous point 2) is com- more accurate behaviour models of the flexible facing.
pared to the minimum one needed to break down the
mesh. If the volume between the nails is smaller than
the one that breaks down the mesh, then the mesh fulfil Appendix: Stability and Displacement of the
the problem; on contrary, the facing does not satisfy the Mesh
problem.
4. Serviceability limit state: this stage analyzes the mesh Officine Maccaferri has developed the software BIOS for the
displacement by means of the curves load–displacement. automatic computation of the mesh capacity which uses the
The graphics allows to determine the volume of soil “two wedge method” for the calculation of the instable soil
related to the maximum admissible displacement. If that mass, in the hypothesis that the two wedges lye within the
volume is larger than the one waited on the long term, the space delimitated by two adjacent nails; in order to maxi-
facing satisfy the requirements of design. The maximum mize the driving force, the software automatically searches
design displacement is assumed upon one or more geo- the worst wedges combination. It is assumed that the debris
technical criterion (effects of the mesh displacement develops distributed load on the facing, so that the total force
on the stripping, triggering erosion processes, effects acting shall be (Fig. 6):
of settlements induced in the neighbour), functional
(maximum encumbrance of debris pockets) and aesthetic. T tot ¼ T 1 þ T 2 (1)
where:
Next Developments
½ðW 1 þQ1 Þ ðtany1 tanf0 1 Þþ ðU 1 tanf0 1 K 1 Þ=cosy1
T1 ¼
The flexible structural facing represents a very interesting ð1þtany1 tanf0 1 Þ
solution since it offers several technological and environ- (2)
mental advantages. The tests on site showed many applica-
tive limits of the flexible facing and allowed the
ðP þ aÞ r 2
AREA1 ¼ þXr References
2
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
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FHWA A-SA-96-06R, Washington DC
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L (m) Length of the mesh;
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Area 2 is determined by: Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration
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put at risk. realises par cluage des soil. Presses Ponts et chaussées