Investigation on Mechanical Behavior of Embedded Geocell in Geocell-Reinforced Railway Embankment

Increasing the axle load and velocity of existing railway tracks is one of the railway industry approaches that has been taken to improve the rail transport system. In this regard, improvement of railway embankments as an important part of each railway infrastructure is necessary more than ever. In current study, using geocell layers in railway embankment body as an improvement technique for geotechnical issues has investigated. In the present study, a numerical model was developed for a 10-meter height embankment in a 1:20 scale laboratory, and sensitivity analysis was carried out on adhesion and elastic modulus of the embankment, geocell elastic modulus, and the embankment length. Loading was carried out on each reinforced and non-reinforced embankments until the failure. The results indicate an increase in the loading capacity of the embankment and reduction of the crest settlement proportional to the increase in the number of geocell layers. This trend keeps increasing to four layers of the geocell and, after placing the fifth layer, a decreasing trend was observed. In addition, the result around geocell behavior indicated that stress inside the embedded geocell under loading is low in comparison with the tensile test result of the geocell. It means the geocell material has not entered the plastic range and the embankments stay stable because of geocell tensile strength.