In GeoAmericas 2016, Avesani Neto et al. won the Student Award for their paper entitled “Design of a Calculation Method for Geocell-reinforced Soils and Verification through Bearing Capacity Laboratory Experiments.” As nicely elaborated in their award-winning paper, Avesani Neto et al. developed an analytical methodology to estimate bearing capacity of geocell-reinforced soils. The calculation method developed by the researchers separately estimates the improvement in the soil bearing capacity that is resulted from the use of geocell and adds the improvement as an additional term to the unreinforced soil bearing capacity. In their calculation method, the unreinforced soil bearing capacity has been estimated using Terzaghi’s method and the improvement by geocell has been estimated considering both “confinement” and “stress dispersion” effects. Avesani Neto et al. has compared the bearing capacity estimated by their calculation method to the results that have been reported in the literature for 75 experimental models with a wide range of soil types, geocell types, loading shapes and dimensions, and strain levels. They have also compared the results obtained by their calculation method to those predicted by three previously developed calculation methodologies. In general, the calculation method developed by Avesani Neto et al. resulted comparatively closer bearing capacity values to the experimental data than the values predicted by the other calculation methods. Specifically, the calculation method developed by Avesani Neto et al. has adopted a well-balanced contribution from the “confinement” and “stress dispersion” effects by limiting the improvement resulted from each effect based on the aspect ratio of the geocell.
The readers are strongly encouraged to read the full paper through this link.
Reported by Gholam Hossein Roodi, IGS Young Members Committee for the North American Region
