Experimental study on influences of inter-layered arrangements of soilbags on reinforcement of sandy soil slopes

The effectiveness of soilbags on slope reinforcement is verified in many engineering applications. However, there is no systematic experimental study on the influences of the inter-layered arrangements of soilbags on the reinforcement of soil slopes. The laboratory physical model tests on the soil slopes reinforced by soilbags with five different inter-layered arrangements are conducted. The influences of the inter-layered arrangements of soilbags on the reinforcement of soil slopes and their characteristics are investigated by analyzing the failure mode and pressure of slopes, the horizontal transmission and vertical distribution of soil pressures, and the variation tendency of the horizontal displacements during the loading process. The experimental results show that the bearing capacity and the settlement are the largest when the vertically and horizontally inter-layered stagger arrangement of soilbags (Arrangement 1) is applied. Arrangement 1 has the best reinforcement effectiveness among the five different arrangements. In addition, the longer the tail is buried in the slope, the stronger the inter-layered constraint is. The stronger inter-layered constraint causes stronger embedding effectiveness between the soilbag layers, and this effectiveness exhibits stronger deformation constraint, which induces better reinforcement effectiveness.