Response of sensor-enabled piezoelectric geobelt reinforced soil pullout friction signals

Geosynthetics are widely used in soil reinforcement engineering, where the failure modes of geosynthetics are typically pullout modes. However, current research on monitoring the pullout damage experienced by reinforced soil is limited. Accordingly, this study tested the stress variation laws and signal output characteristics of a sensor-enabled piezoelectric geobelt (SPGB) that can capture the tensile vibration signals of reinforced soil under various tensile failure conditions. We observed that the SPGB captures the response signals under different soil environments, confining pressures, and shear rates. During the pullout friction process, a spike is generated, and the displacement corresponding to the position of the spike will increase with the increase of the pullout friction rate. In the clay environment, the spike voltage is related to the confining pressure, while in the sand environment, there is no obvious relationship between the spike voltage and the confining pressure. In the gravel environment, the output voltage of SPGB fluctuates greatly, due to the embedment of gravel particles, and many negative voltages with large amplitude appeared. This study verified the promising application potential of the SPGB for the integration of soil reinforcement and monitoring, which is significant for further application of SPGB in engineering.