Soil pressures against slope-stabilising shafts: some aspects deducted via centrifuge tests

The paper investigates experimentally the behaviour of a slope reinforced by means of shafts. A series of centrifuge tests was performed, involving a single shaft and a row of three shafts at very narrow spacing. This work focuses solely on a particular aspect of the problem, that is the development of bending moment on the shafts due to interaction pressures. It is shown that the two different cases correspond to two distinct mechanisms of sliding which, in turn, lead to different distributions of internal forces. The experi-mental results are thereby examined in light of existing design methods concerning with the evaluation of pressures, which is a crucial ingredient for both the structural design of the reinforcement and the assessment of the safety margins associated with the reinforced slope.