In today's interconnected world, transportation infrastructure serves as the lifeblood of modern societies; it facilitates the movement of goods, services, and people, ensuring the efficient functioning of economies and communities. Extreme events such as earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes can disrupt these critical systems, leading to widespread disruption and economic loss. The impact of such disruptions can be particularly severe in developing countries with limited infrastructure capacity.

This study investigates experimentally and numerically the static and dynamic response of reinforced earth structures acting as foundations, retaining systems, and slopes supporting transportation infrastructure. To this end the objectives of the study are twofold. First, the interaction between Steel Rebar Arrangements (SRA) and typical backfill materials, is examined by performing pull-out tests in reduced scale experiments performed in the laboratory. The research seeks to evaluate how different arrangements of reinforcement and backfill materials, ranging from clean gravel to mixtures with fine contents up to 50%, influence the pull-out resistance of the rebar, providing insights into optimal design parameters for enhanced soil stability. Tests were conducted under controlled water content and vertical pressures to evaluate the effects of water content, confinement, and type of material on soil-rebar bonding strength. Numerical tests using ABAQUS simulate the experimentally obtained pull out strengths with accuracy. Three different SRA’s have been investigated in numerical tests under dry conditions, to optimize rebar configurations for enhancing soil stability under static loading. The latter indicated that tighter transverse rebar spacing and increased vertical pressure significantly improve pull-out resistance due to enhanced soil confinement and interaction between the rebar and soil.

 Second, the dynamic behavior of a reduced scale embankment made of mine tailings obtained from Megalopoli, a coal mining site in Southern Greece, was examined with the aid of a 2ton shaking table. Using seismic inputs based on the Kobe earthquake, the study evaluated wave amplification and displacement behavior of the embankment. This response was numerically simulated, using FLAC 3D, with great accuracy. Numerical tests were also used to investigate the incorporation of geotextile layers, which proved effective in reducing both seismic amplification and horizontal displacements, with the most efficient performance observed in embankments reinforced with three layers of geotextile.

The research concludes that optimized rebar arrangements, particularly with tighter transverse spacing, significantly improve static pull-out resistance. The geotextile reinforcement in embankments under seismic loading, was found to reduce amplification and displacement effectively. .