Soil Nailing

Soil nailing is an in situ soil reinforcement technique that can be used to enhance the stability of slopes, retaining walls, embankments, and excavations. It involves installation of closely spaced, relatively slender unstressed tension-carrying structural elements into the ground to stabilize the soil mass. These elements, which are called soil nails, comprise steel or other engineering materials such as fiber reinforced polymer.

Soil nailing did not gain popularity until the 1970s when engineers started to realize that the technique could offer an effective, robust, and economical reinforcing system for a variety of ground conditions. More importantly, the track record has been excellent in that no major collapses have been reported in properly designed and well-constructed soil nailed structures so far. Considerable experience and knowledge of the technique have been gained in the past few decades through systematic technical development work comprising laboratory