The knowledge of soil-geosynthetic interaction is a key point in the design of geosynthetic reinforced soil structures. With regard to the pullout limit state, pullout tests can simulate it by using large- scale laboratory apparatus, and they allow studying the interaction mechanisms that develop in the anchorage zone. During the service life of geosynthetic-reinforced soil structures, geogrids may be sub-jected to cyclic or dynamic loads in addition to the sustained tensile load acting under service load condi-tions. In order to define the peak pullout resistance mobilized after a cyclic loading history (a sinusoidal load with fixed amplitude A, number of cycles N and frequency f) and to analyse the cyclic strain behav-iour of soil-geosynthetic interface, the writers carried out a series of multi-stage pullout tests on an HDPE extruded uniaxial geogrid embedded in a well-compacted granular soil for different vertical effective stress σ’v values. The test results show that the design pullout resistance parameters could be affected by the applied cyclic history for specific combined loading conditions (A, N and σ’v) and it should be taken into account for designing geosynthetic reinforced soil structures.
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