Soil slope remediation works using soil nail

Abstract

In urban development, the road development plays an important role in development process. However, earthworks as the main activity in road construction creates large area of man-made slopes. Slopes are tends to be unstable after being constructed if it is not properly designed. Therefore, slopes which are unstable need to be designed with the proper mechanism to ensure the safety of the users besides minimizing the long term maintenance cost. Soil nail is the common type of mechanism used in Malaysia because only limited excavation and reasonable right-of-way (ROW) and clearing limits are required. Given the wide use of soil nails, a proper design of slope geometry based on engineering sound fundamentals is necessary in order to ensure the soil nail slope performs satisfactory during its service line. In this paper, a study was being conducted to identify the effect of the slope geometry in term of Factor of Safety (FOS) on a soil nail treated slope of a road construction works. The analysis to access the FOS of treated slopes of different geometries are performed by GeoStudio using Morgenstern Price method. The results obtained in this study suggests that the correct combination of slope geometry with the soil nail treatment can increase the FOS of a treated slope.