Small scale 1 g physical models of geosynthetics-reinforced structures – despite limitations due to their different operational stress levels – can still represent a valuable tool for the analysis of their actual behaviour, where the soil-reinforcement interaction plays a fundamental role. A new experimental research on reinforced retaining walls has been recently undertaken at the Soil Mechanics Laboratory of the University of Padova (Italy), with the main aim of investigating the long term behaviour of such soil structures, where creep phenomena – especially of polymers used as reinforcements – cannot be neglected. The paper, besides a presentation of the experimental equipment and testing procedure, shows preliminary test results in which three different types of geosynthetics were used.
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