Short and long term behaviour of geogrids under static and cyclic load

This paper deals with the short and long term mechanical behaviour of two geogrids for soil reinforcement applications. The short term mechanical behaviour has been investigated by means of tensile tests carried out at constant rate of strain and by cyclic tests with incremental loads. The long term behaviour of these materials has been studied by means of tensile creep tests. On the base of the tests’ results, the authors have proposed very simple laws to predict the behaviour of the long term deformation and tensile creep modulus. The use of the above laws has allowed the prediction of the long term deformation from the short term tests performed using cyclic loading, once the design load and the temperature are known.