Multimedia approach to design of reinforced-earth retaining structure

There is growing need for a systematic presentation of the fundamental concepts of earth-reinforced retaining structure design and the basic steps involved in the computational methods therewith since, unfortunately, no texts suitable for undergraduate instruction with computer methods are presently available. This paper illustrates with the in-house developed software "GEOWALL" the advantage of using a computer to perform a design process, which is otherwise lengthy and tedious, for soil reinforcement method of retaining a soil mass. The earth-reinforced retaining system comprises a relatively large number of closely spaced metallic reinforcing strips or woven geotextiles or continuous sheets of geogrids, segmental facing units and selected granular fill. The software package is an interactive program developed for the design of segmental wall systems to retain soils behind the wall. The program uses recent design practices, computerizes manual methods of design to achieve improved speed as well as reliability of calculations, and runs on IBM-PC or other compatible microcomputer hardware using DOS operating system. The program achieves a high degree of user friendliness through an easily followed format and explicit data prompts.