Abstract: Reinforced soil abutment is widely used in various engineering constructions because of the good composite performance. The study of its working performance under actual conditions is of great significance to design and popularization. Reinforced soil abutment is mainly subjected to traffic loads in service. In this study, an accelerated stress test of large-scale model was carried out to investigate the working performance of reinforced soil abutment under traffic loads, and to analyze the deformation characteristics of the abutment and the strain of the reinforcements under different loading levers and numbers of loading cycles considering some factors such as spacing and stiffness of the reinforcement. The results indicate that the overall deformation of the reinforced soil abutment tends to converge under traffic loads. The settlement at the top of the abutment, the lateral displacement of the facing and the strain of the reinforcements are much less than the threshold suggested by the current specification. The deformation exhibits stepped variations over loading time and the convergent tendency differs under various conditions. Increasing the stiffness of reinforcement and reducing the spacing of reinforcement are beneficial to improve the ability of deformation resistance of the abutment, while the stiffness of reinforcement plays a more important role in deformation control. In addition, the quantitative relationship between the maximum lateral strain at the facing and the maximum vertical strain at the top of the abutment is not two times, and the quantitative relationship between the two needs to be further studied.

Key words: reinforced soil abutment, traffic loads, model test, accelerated stress method, service performance