Flexural Behavior of Reinforced Soil Beams

Abstract

To investigate the flexural behavior of reinforced soil beams, tests were performed on rectangular and trapezoidal soil beams of varying span to depth ratios and varying amounts of reinforcements. Local silty clay was used in the study and simple supports for the beams were employed. The results indicate that strains are linearly distributed across the depth of the beam up to cracking and become nonlinear thereafter. Improvement due to reinforcement is smaller in trapezoidal and shallow beams. The increase in failure compressive strains is more for beams of smaller span to depth ratio and with larger amounts of reinforcements.