Abstract: As a bearing structure, the reinforced soil abutment has attracted much attention for its bearing capacity and its influencing factors. Taking the Bowman bridge as the engineering prototype, this paper studies the bearing capacity of the reinforced soil flexible abutment by the scale model test. In the experimental study, three groups of load tests of the reinforced soil flexible abutment were set up, which uses the geotextile as the reinforcement material. This paper mainly studies the influence of bridge base position on the bearing capacity of the abutment. Test results show that the setback is an important factor affecting the bearing capacity of the reinforced abutment, and that the bearing capacity increases with the setback, but the amount of increase is rapidly diminishing. The horizontal and vertical settlements at the top of the abutment decrease with the increase of the setback, and the decreasing trend shows convergence. With the increase of setback, the maximum strain of reinforcement decreases, and the overall stability of abutment is enhanced, showing better complex characteristics. In addition, the results of this experimental study also prove that the calculation method of bearing capacity of reinforced abutments in the current US regulations may be limited to specific packing and reinforcement arrangement. Therefore, it should be combined with actual conditions in engineering practice.

Key words: geosynthetics, reinforced soil abutment, load-bearing characteristics, load test