A STUDY OF GROUT PROPERTIES IN SOIL NAILS PULLOUT TESTS

Soil nailing is the technique where in-situ ground is reinforced by the insertion of tension-carrying soil nail. The soil-nail interface shear resistance plays an important role in determining the stability of nailed cut. The effect of grout properties is investigated to evaluate the pullout resistance of soil nail. A series of pullout tests were performed at four differentconstruction sites. Three-dimensional (3-D) finite element (FE) model using the ABAQUS code was developed and nonassociated elastic-plastic soil constitutive model using the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion was employed to simulate the behavior of soil and grout in pullout test procedure. The Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion parameters of grout were determined by comparing the simulated results with pull-out test measured datas, and then the influence of these parameters were studied on the pull-out resistance of soil nails