Creep behaviour of model fabric reinforced brick faced earth retaining walls

The paper describes a study of the extension of creep of model fabric reinforced brick faced earth retaining walls. This type of wall construction combines the reinforced earth techniques with a conventional brick wall. The study was carried out on walls 300 mm high, 240 mm wide, with good foundation grounds, and reinforced with short sheets of a non-woven fabric “Vilene-312” used as interfacing in dressmaking. The walls were built, backfilled and then surcharged. During the creep tests the surcharge was left for a long period of time and both wall deflection and reinforcement deformation were measured during that period. Both the deflections and the tensile stresses generated after the first five minutes are significant and they become more significant as the load level increases. However creep does not seems to be a major problem. Results also show evidence that the system became stiffer while the time was passing and therefore creep effect is more important when the load is applied immediately after construction than same time later.