Abstract

A reinforced sand beam was tested at the laboratory, in order to understand the behaviour of the sand during the failure mechanism. A series of structural tests on the sand and on the reinforcement material were conducted first, and then a reinforced sand beam was constructed in the laboratory. The results were checked theoretically and numerical simulations were also carried out, to examine the moment stiffness of the reinforced structure. In order to generate a general result, elasticity moduli of the different conditions were calculated and compared to each other, with the changing circumstances. It was clearly proved that, reinforced sand beams have a strong bending resistance. The increasing effect of reinforcement was calculated using the experiment results.

Key words: Reinforcement, stability analysis, soil structure, geosynthetics, sand.