Geotextile Reinforced Lime Treated Cohesive Soil Retaining Walls

The behavior of geotextile reinforced retaining walls backfilled with lime treated cohesive soil was investigated using reduced-scale physical models tested to failure under self-weight in a geotechnical centrifuge. The following three modes of failure were identified in this study for untreated and lime treated cohesive soil walls: overturning, rotational sliding, and planar sliding. The addition of 2% lime to the backfill significantly improved the prototype equivalent failure height, and it influenced the position of the failure surface by moving the slip surface toward the front of the wall. The lime treated backfill models collapsed suddenly along a bilinear slip surface in a brittle type of failure with little prefailure deformation, while the untreated clay backfill models collapsed gradually along a curvilinear slip surface and withstood large deformations prior to failure. A limit equilibrium analysis incorporating the horizontal and tangential effects of geotextile reinforcement was found to be a good predictor of wall behavior.