Geosynthetics have been widely used in the construction of reinforced soil structures, however, the reinforcement mechanism has not been fully understood. To investigate the macro-meso properties of geosyntheitc-reinforced soils, biaxial compression tests of reinforced soils were conducted in this study. Geomembrane was used as reinforcement element and aluminum rods as backfill material. A free image analysis module, GeoPIV-RG, was applied to reveal the distribution of horizontal and vertical displacements of the specimens under vertical load and lateral confining pressure. The results indicated that reinforcement-soil interaction was closely related with the stiffness and spacing of reinforcements, which had a strong effect on the global volumetric strain, and the reinforcement spacing played more important role in controlling the properties of geosynthetic-reinforced granular material than reinforcement stiffness. The reinforcing effects of geosynthetics with weak stiffness cannot develop quite well until its tensile stress was mobilized substantially. Reinforcements also were capable of controlling the distribution of vertical settlements and restraining its development along the height of the specimen when reinforced with closely-spaced reinforcements particularly.
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