A method for determining the stiffness of geotextile confined in soil is proposed, which interprets the stiffness of geotextile by combining small scale direct shear test and large scale pullout test results. The main idea of the method is to obtain the axial tensile force and tensile strain distribution in geotextile by considering the effect of soil/geotextile interface resistance. The method was successfully applied to determine the stiffness of a non-woven geotextile confined in dense sand. For the case investigated, it shows that in-soil stiffness is much higher than that of in-air case, especially, for tensile strain less than 3% (corresponding to working state of reinforced earth structure), the in-soil stiffness is about 2 to 3 times of in-air data. For determining the design stiffness of geotextile, further research on creep behavior of geotextile is needed.
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