Abstract: The aim of this study is to investigate the feasibility of utilizing the waste plastic bottles filled with soil as the transverse element attached to the steel stripe in the Mechanically Stabilized Earth Walls (MSEWs). Transverse members of reinforcement have a major effect on increasing the pullout resistance. This system is comprised of a steel stripe as a longitudinal member and waste plastic bottles filled with soil as transverse members attached to it. To understand this, pullout tests were conducted on one steel strip and seven steel stripes with one to seven bottles. More than 18 laboratory large-scale pullout tests (i.e. length1.20 m, width 0.6 m, and height 1 m) under different normal stresses were conducted to evaluate the performance of the newly suggested reinforcement element. The results showed that creating a third dimension on a flat steel strip has a great effect on increasing the pullout resistance, the most efficient adding four transverse members to the steel strip with the ratio of distance to diameter (S/D) equal to 3, that the pullout resistance was to average about 5 times greater than the steel strip alone. The ultimate pullout resistance for steel strips with transverse members and without transverse members increased by increased vertical stress.

Key words: pullout resistance, transverse members, waste plastic bottles, reinforcement soil, pullout test