| Surficial slope failures can be very disruptive and costly to transportation agencies. A method using recycled plastic pins to reinforce the slopes and prevent surficial slope failures was developed and evaluated. Design for this method involves many uncertainties, most notably the resistance in the reinforcing members. The primary objective of the research presented is to evaluate the resistance provided by the reinforcing members installed at field test sites, thus reducing the uncertainties and allowing improvements to existing design and analysis methods to be made.; Two calibration procedures are described: one for test sites experiencing failure and one for test sites were no failure occurred. During the calibration procedure, resistance of the reinforcement was varied such that field performance matched the computed stability. Results of the calibration analysis indicate that existing methods can be effectively calibrated by varying the moment capacity, but not by varying the limit soil pressure. Existing methods may also be calibrated by considering combined axial and lateral resistance, although additional research is needed to further evaluate this possibility. |
