Degree of saturation effect on the grout-soil interface shear strength of soil nailing

In the grouted soil nailing system, the bonding strength of cement grout-soil interface offers the required resistance to maintain the stability of whole structure. In practice, soil nailing applications are often placed at unsaturated conditions, such as soil slopes, shallow foundations, retaining walls and pavement structures. In these cases, the water content in the soil nail zone may increase or decrease due to rain water or dry weather, and even cannot become saturated during their design service life. In this study, the effect of water content (degree of saturation) on the shear strength of interface between cement grout and sand are experimentally investigated by means of direct shear test. Meanwhile the water retention curve was determined and interface microstructure was observed. Experimental results show that the shear strength of interface changes non-monotonously with degree of saturation when the interface was prepared, due to the non-monotonousness of the cohesiveness between soil particles. The less the cohesiveness between sand particles, the more grout was observed been penetrated into the voids, and thus the larger the interface shear stress.