Influence of soil dilatancy on soil nail pull-out resistance in completely decomposed granite fill

Soil nailing, developed from the New Austrian Tunnelling Method, has been widely used in many countries and regions in the world since the 1970's. This technique is used to stabilize in situ soil mass by installing a large number of closely spaced unstressed inclusions into the soil mass to increase its strength and stability. Since the mid 1970's, several design methods have been proposed based on laboratory and field tests. Among the design criteria in these methods, the pull-out resistance of a soil nail is a key parameter that controls the stability assessment of soil nail structure. In the previous investigations, the soil dilatancy was found to be an important factor that influences the soil nail pull-out resistance especially for drill-and-grout soil nails. In order to study the influence of soil dilatancy on soil nail pull-out resistance, laboratory pull-out tests and numerical parametric studies have been carried out for soil nails in Completely Decomposed Granite (CDG) fill. The results show that the soil dilatancy has a significant influence on the soil nail pull-out resistance.