Abstract
Rainfall can cause erosion of expansive soil slope and subsequently slope failure. Prior studies have shown that the protection of expansive soil slope against erosion is important. The goal of this study is to investigate the erosion performance of an innovative expansive soil slope strengthening technique – High Performance Turf Reinforcement Mat (HPTRM). The HPTRM is a three-dimensional turf reinforcement mat joined at the intersections of randomly oriented nylon filaments with high tenacity polyester geogrid reinforcement at low strains. As the grass roots grow through the open space of HPTRM, roots become entwined within the turf reinforced mat. The interlocking between roots and HPTRM can enhance the resistance against hydraulic and shear forces during the rainfall-induced erosion. Artificial simulated rainfall system was used to simulate the rainfall intensities and duration in Nanning, China. Different slope gradients and rainfall intensities/duration were studied. The experimental results show that the erosion amount reduced by 70% ~ 85% in the HPTRM-strengthened slope under the moderate-intensity rain or heavy-intensity rainfall, compared to the erosion on the same expansive soil slope without vegetated HPTRM strengthening. The erosion amount was only about 1% of the bare slope when the slope was protected by vegetative HPTRM system under different rainfall intensities. The result demonstrated that that the vegetative HPTRM system can enhance soil resistant ability to rainfall-induced erosion-resistant ability.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (No. 51178124) and the Project of Department of Land and Resources of Guangxi (No. GXZC2015-G3-4366-KLZB).
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Xu, Y., Yan, R., Linqiang, T., Kang, C., Li, L. (2019). Experimental Study of Erosion on Expansive Soil Slope Strengthened by HPTRM System. In: Frikha, W., Kawamura, S., Liao, WC. (eds) New Developments in Soil Characterization and Soil Stability. GeoChina 2018. Sustainable Civil Infrastructures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95756-2_2
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