article · Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering
Soil nailing using vertical steel inclusions can substantially enhance the mechanical performance of cohesive soil. Testing clay reinforced with vertical steel bars under unconfined compression and direct shear demonstrates that the inclusions share the applied vertical load with the surrounding clay. Adding more vertical nails leads to significant gains in both shear strength and stiffness, alongside a clear decrease in soil settlement. Testing across varied nail numbers, embedment depths, and alignment radiuses showed that placing six inclusions along the perimeter at an embedment depth ratio of 0.85 increases shear strength to 231 percent. In addition, using sufficient numbers of deeper inclusions helps eliminate shear failure and shifts the soil response from brittle or general shear failure to a more gradual, plastic failure mode.
Cohesive soils like clay often suffer from instability and excessive settlement, creating serious structural risks for infrastructure. Reinforcing such soils with vertical steel nails strengthens weak ground, enabling it to support heavier loads with minimal sinking. Crucially, the technique helps avoid sudden, catastrophic ground collapses by transforming brittle failure into a more gradual and manageable deformation pattern.
This experimental work demonstrates a ground improvement method applicable to geotechnical engineering, underground works, and civil construction projects dealing with soft cohesive soils. Civil contractors and ground engineering specialists could utilise these structural configurations to stabilise weak ground. Because the findings are derived from laboratory-scale compression and shear tests on clay samples, the technique is in an applied testing stage and requires full-scale field validation prior to real-world deployment.
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This article deals with the assessment of the soil nailing technique with a vertical inclusion to improve the geotechnical parameters of cohesive soil. A series of unconfined compression tests and direct shear tests were carried out to establish the stress–strain relationship and strength characteristics of the reinforced clay sample by vertical steel nails. The shear strength performance of the new composite material was tested by varying the number of vertical inclusions, the embedment depth and the alignment radius. The results confirmed that the vertical bars/inclusions shared the vertical applied load with clay. Increase in the number of vertical inclusions significantly increases the shear strength and the stiffness with a remarkable reduction in settlement. When the clay samples were reinforced with six inclusions along the perimeter, the shear strength was increased to 231% for the embedment depth ratio equal to 0.85. To obtain the optimum effect in eliminating shear failure, the vertical inclusions should be extended to a deeper zone with sufficient numbers. It has been found that the vertical inclusions significantly influence the shear strength, and the brittle or general shear failure of the unreinforced sample can be diverted to partial/plastic shear failure.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.jrmge.2017.05.009
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