Stability design of a geosynthetic reinforced rock cuttings wall

Abstract

Rocks excavation with tunnel boring machines induces a lot of cuttings. This granular material needs to be stored. When reinforced by geosynthetics, significant tensile stresses can be obtained in the resulting composite structure which allows to build steep slopes. A real case study of a reinforced rock cuttings wall is presented in this paper. To study accurately this complex problem, two calculation methods were used: a limit equilibrium (using the Bishop criteria), classically used for these kinds of stability problems and two-dimensional finite element calculations. These two methods are different and give different results. The FE calculation is the more representative and the more conservative method for such designs when considering the studied case.