Author(s)

Diaa W. El Hourani¹, Ify L. Nwaogazie^1*, Godfrey Waribo TomJaja²

¹Center for Geotechnical & Coastal Engineering Research, University of Port Harcourt, Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
²Faculty of Engineering, Rivers State University, Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

The use of geotextiles as a reinforcement material for improving the factor of safety against slope failure in embankments built on soft clay is becoming a common practice. This work is intended to help understand the effect of the geotextile reinforcement has on such embankments and to provide a design aid for civil engineers that enables them to quickly estimate the factor of safety against slope failure. Seventy four different cases were modelled and analyzed using a finite element software, GeoStudio 2018 R2. The results showed that the optimum improvement was achieved when using a single layer of geotextile reinforcement placed at the base of the embankment, by which the factor of safety increased by up to 40%. Adding a second layer, a third layer and a fourth layer, increases the safety factor by 2.5%, 1% and 0.5% respectively. Different charts for different heights of embankments were presented to aid in finding the most suitable slope angle and number of reinforcement layers required to achieve a certain safety factor.

Reinforced Soil, Embankments, Soft Soils, Slope Stability

Hourani, D. , Nwaogazie, I. and TomJaja, G. (2023) Finite Element Modeling of Geotextile Reinforced Embankments on Soft Clay. Open Journal of Civil Engineering, 13, 48-57. doi: 10.4236/ojce.2023.131004.