Abstract: The influences of the magnitude and distribution of horizontal earth pressure on reinforced body using unbonded prestressed reinforcement technique were studied through scaled model tests in the paper. The steel shot was adopted for its appropriate similarity ratio to simulate medium sand in the model test. Two cases were tested to compare the common reinforced body and the single unbonded prestressed reinforced body. The comparison shows that the settlement on the top of body with unbonded prestressed reinforcement before applying pre-tension is less than that on the top of the common reinforced body. The settlement on the top of reinforced body increases with the application of pre-tension. However, the vertical deformation of the reinforced body with single unbonded prestressed reinforcement is smaller under the heaping load. With the increase of pre-tension, the strain of fiberglass geogrid adjacent to prestressed reinforcement decreases and that of fiberglass geogrid at the bottom increases, particularly at the measuring-points near the panel. The pre-tension of the unbonded prestressed reinforcement remains unchanged during applying the heaping load on the top, and increases slightly after completing the heaping load.

Key words: prestress, reinforcement, reinforced body, mechanical property, model test