Reinforced Earth Retaining ·walls with Lateritic Soil as Backfill

The investigation as reported in this paper concerns about the suitability of lateritic soil as backfill for reinforced soil retaining walls. Since the lateritic soil has a low friction angle, a thin layer of sand on either side of the reinforcement (sandwich layer) has been provided to increase the interface friction. A series of pullout tests with lateritic soil as backfill was conducted to determine the optimum sand layer thickness, in the sandwich technique. Model studies of retaining walls with lateritio’soil as backfill were also carried out using the sandwich technique. The optimum thickness of the sand layer obtained from the pullout tests was used for the model studies. Interfacial friction was found to improve substantially with the introduction of the sandwich technique. Thus reinforced soil retaining walls with lateritic soil as backfill using the sandwich technique ·showed better performance.