International Conference on Civil Engineering

Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development

18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

Recommended Method for Soil Nailing to Provide

Stability of Drill Hole in the Loose Soil

Koohyar Faizi1, Ali Vahabi2, Danial Jahed Armaghani3

1. Postgraduate Student, University Technology Malaysia UTM, koohyar.faizi@yahoo.com

2. Postgraduate Student, Azad University, Science & Research Branch
3. PhD Student, University Technology Malaysia, UTM

Abstract
Significant soil nail wall projects in the North of Tehran, Iran were recently completed
with a combined area of 1341 Square meter of finished shotcrete surface. These projects
required the use of innovative technique for soil nailing in order to address various
challenges, including weak type of soil, highly deep excavation, non-geometric
excavation, very tight construction tolerances and unexpected subsurface conditions. In
this paper, method of soil nail installation for running ground condition is recommended
to provide stability of drill hole over the length. A good result has been observed by using
this method in the recent project.

Key words: Soil, Nailing, Excavation

1. Introduction
Soil nailing is a method of providing temporary earth support and retention during excavation
for new construction. The technique is also used for construction of permanent retaining
walls, slope stabilization, underpinning, and protection of existing cuts. The soil nailing
concept was developed in Europe for the permanent and temporary stabilization of natural
slopes, for renovation of old retaining walls, and for repair of earth walls that had prematurely
deteriorated. The first recorded application was in France in 1972. Soil nailing was also used
as temporary shoring for basement excavations and as permanent and temporary earth support
for excavations associated with railroads and tunnels [1].
The first recorded use of soil nailing in the United States was in the mid 1970s as a method of
providing temporary earth support during the construction of a new hospital. The major use of
 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

soil nailing in the United States to date has been for temporary excavation support and earth
retention during construction of buildings and other structures in urban areas [2].
Since its development in Iran in recent years, soil nailing has become a widely accepted
method of providing temporary and permanent earth support, underpinning and slope
stabilization on many civil projects in Tehran. In the early years, soil nailing was typically
performed only on projects where specialty geotechnical contractors offered it as an alternate
to other conventional systems. More recently, soil nailing has been specified as the system of
choice due to its overall acceptance and effectiveness. However, although the theoretical
engineering aspects of soil nailing may be well understood, there is a far lesser degree of
understanding, even within the geotechnical community, as to the site conditions – and
construction problems[3,4].
The purpose of this paper is to offer experienced-method guidelines to owners, engineers,
designers and general contractors trying to decide soil nailing in running ground sites for their
project. Soil nail details and procedures for case study are presented as a tool to aid in
making those decisions.

2. Various Types of Soil Nailing

Various types of soil nailing methods are employed in the field include [5]:

1. Grouted nail- After excavation, first holes are drilled in the wall/slope face and then
the nails are placed in the pre-drilled holes. Finally, the drill hole is then filled with
cement grout.

2. Driven nail- In this type, nails are mechanically driven to the wall during excavation.
Installation of this type of soil nailing is very fast.

3. Self-drilling soil nail- Hollow bars are driven and grout is injected through the hollow
bar simultaneously during the drilling. This method is faster than the grouted nailing
and it exhibits more corrosion protection than driven nail.

4. Jet-grouted soil nail- Jet grouting is used to erode the ground and for creating the
hole to install the steel bars. The grout provides corrosion protection for the nail.

5. Launched soil nail- Bars are “launched” into the soil with very high speed using
firing mechanism involving compressed air.
 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

However, most of these methods are not performed in Iran. The typical steps of soil nailing,
which is conventional in Iran, are demonstrated in Figure1.

Figure 1. Typical steps for nailing (Grouted nail)

 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

3. Conventional Methods Are Applied For Collapsible Soils

Soil nails are not suitable in collapsible soils, because during drilling of hole, the ungrouted
hole may collapse. To provide stability to the drill hole in the soil mass over this length some
methods were recommended.

In such cases, drilling can be conducted by providing casing during the drilling process. The
drilling and grouting process may also cause disturbance to the ground. This is generally used
as temporary nailing.
In the United States, common practice is to use rotary and rotary/percussion drill rigs for the
installation of the nail, although it is quite common to utilize augers in cohesive soils. In
Europe, some contractors utilize machines to drive the soil nails into the ground (launched
nails).This method of installation is very fast; however, it is difficult to control the length of
the bar penetrating the ground [4,6]. The launching mechanism is shown in Figure 2.
Drill hollow bar has been used in some projects as a fully threaded self-drilling anchorage
system which can be simultaneously drilled and grouted into loose or collapsing soils and
brittle rock without the need for a casing, but this methods needs own specific nails.
In Hong Kong, drilling of a soil-nail hole is commonly carried out by pneumatic percussive
rigs (Figure3) with air as the flushing medium. Temporary casing is normally not required in
the typical saprolitic soils encountered in Hong Kong. In special circumstances, a more robust
drilling rig, for example, the Odex type drilling equipment, is used for driving temporary
casing into a hole concurrent with drilling to prevent the hole from collapsing in difficult
ground conditions.

Figure 2. Nail gun

 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

Figure 3. Common Practice of Drilling of a Soil Nail using a Pneumatic Percussive Rig
Most of the nailing methods, which were mentioned above, are expensive or have some
technical limitation in Iran. Therefore, the method for soil nailing to provide stability of drill
hole in the loose soil mass over the length, is recommended in this paper.

4. Structural Properties
In this study, properties of soil for the project of 15-story apartment building in Tehran,
which were collected based on laboratory and in situ tests, are shown in Table 1 [7].

Table1. Properties of Soil

Specification Depth Type of soil ɣw ν E C Φ
3 2 2
Unit m Kg/cm Kg/cm Kg/cm degree

GW-GM

Excavation SW-SM 1.85-1.91 0.35 50-250 0.15-0.21 20-32

0-10 SC, CL

The Tehran region is located on the foothills of Alborz Mountain and is home to over 10
Million people. It has been the country’s capital city for over 200 years. The City, a veritable
boom town, undergoing intense development, continues to expand both in vertical and lateral
directions. Figure 4 shows the location of the project in theTehran City within the Alborz
Mountain [8].
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Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

Figure 4. Project location

5. Construction Sequencing and Components of Nailing in This Project

Soil nailing is a specialty geotechnical technique. Owners, specifiers and general contractors
should ensure that the work is designed and constructed only by firms with the requisite
experience.
The soil encountered in the excavation was highly variable and very loose over the initial 10
m length of the soil nails. To provide stability to the drill hole in the soil mass over this
length, innovative technique was recommended in this project.

5-1- Excavate in Lifts figures and tables

The execution of soil nailing consists of making a 12 m vertical cut extending with a
horizontal length to be stabilized and shotcreted the same day. The cut was made to 0.3 to 0.8
m below the elevation of the soil nails so that a suitable bench can be established for the
installation of the nails at the proper angle.

5-2-Shotcrete and Nail Installation

Typically, the next step is to install the soil nails. It is important to note that the shotcrete can
be applied prior to installing the nails if there is a concern with the standup time of the soil
and the possibility of sloughing of the soil. So, in this project shotcrete was done before
nailing, because of collapsible soil, depth of excavation ,and the length of nails.The results of
excavation stability for this project based on two types of nailing- shotcrete before nailing and
shotcrete after nailing- which were modeled by PLAXIS 2D, were shown in Figure 5 and
 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

Figure 6 . “PLAXIS” is a finite element software program developed in Holland for the two
and three-dimensional analysis of Geo-structures and Geotechnical Engineering problems. It
includes from the most basic to the most advanced constitutive models for the simulation of
the linear or non-linear, time-dependent and anisotropic behavior of soil and/or rock. PLAXIS
is also equipped with features to deal with various aspects of complex structures and study the
soil-structure interaction effect [9]. were shown in Figure 5 and Figure 6 . As can be seen in
Figure 5, the soil was collapsed at fires step of excavation, when nailing was done without
shotcrete.

Figure 5. Shotcrete after Nailing

Figure 6. Shotcrete before Nailing

 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

Besides, shotcrete facing before drilling can help to reducing the disturbance of hole head,
which is caused during soil drilling. Figure 3 shows the hole drill disturbance caused by two
different method. Soil nails were installed in a 2 m horizontal and vertical grid pattern, with
the drill hole inclination being 10 degrees from horizontal. The holes on average, 100 to 200
mm in diameter. As can be seen in Figure 7, the disturbance of soil nails which caused by
recommended method is much smaller, (picture on the right side), than typical method (
picture on the left side).

Figure 7. Comparing of two hole nail

Once the excavation is made, reinforcing material, a welded wire mesh, may need to be
placed along the face of the excavation to reinforce the concrete facing. Once the welded
mesh are placed, the next step is to apply the shotcrete facing. For most temporary shotcrete
walls, this is accomplished by applying a 75 to 100 mm (3 to 4 in) thick layer of 21 MPa
(3000 psi) concrete.
The next step, drilling of nails was started. The length of nailing was 8 to 10 m and the
inclination of soil nail to the horizontal was 10o. Drilling of hole with the length of 10 meter
before the installation of nail was unstable (short standup time), because of the collapsible soil
of the excavation and the length of the nails. Therefore, drilling and hole’s providing stability
should be gradually done.
First, Soil nail drilling was done up to 3m (Figure 8), then water was injected inside the hole
and an air compressor with the pressure of 5bar was applied to make dry slurry (Figure 9).
This method used to provide surface stability of drill hole with making temporary cohesion.
Drilling continued up to 6 m and water and air compressor used the same as previous step.
Drilling with this method was repeated until reach the required length. The steps of soil
nailing, which were used in this project, was shown in Figure 10.
International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

Figure 8. Drilling up to 3 meters

Figure 9. Water injecting

 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

Figure 10. Steps of recommended soil nailing

5-3-Place Reinforcing & Drainage

When the bearing plate and nut were installed and the nail became loaded as the soil deforms,
this load was transmitted to the shotcrete facing. Because of this, it is important to ensure that
the facing can handle the punching shear induced from the nail load. It may be necessary to
strengthen this area directly behind the bearing plate with reinforcing.

6. Conclusions
Performing of soil nail with the injecting of water to provide stability of the drill hole in the
soil mass over the length as a cheap and fast method for collapsible soil condition, is
recommended in this paper. In addition, as excavation for the soil nail wall proceeded through
this loose fill, which reached a maximum depth of about 10 meter at the wall face, a large
degree of sloughing occurred, particularly in response to disturbance from drilling the nail
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Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

holes. So, shotcrete facing before drilling was suitable solution, which was also recommended
in this project to decrease the disturbance of drill hole head.

References
[1] Clouterre (1991). “Recommendations Clouterre 1991 (English Translation)” FHWA-SA-93-026,
Federal Highway Administration, Washington, D. C. 20590.
[2]Chassie,R.G.(1993).“Soil Nailing Overview” and “Soil Nail Wall Facing Design and
CurrentDevelopments,” presented at the Tenth Annual International Bridge Conference, Pittsburgh,
PA.
[3] Thomas J. (2003), “Nailing: Where, When And Why A Practical Guide”. Presented at the 20th
Central Pennsylvania Geotechnical Conference Hershey, PA.
[4] Tuozzolo, T.J. (1997). “Stabilizing the Stacks - A hybrid soil nailing system provides permanent
underpinning for a historic college library.” Civil Engineering Magazine, December 1997.
[5] Prashant A,(2010).”Soil Nailing For Stabilization of Steep Slope Near Railway Track,”
RDSO,Report.
[6] Murray G,Okada W.,and Barrett R.a “Launched Soil Nails – Theory and Practice”, Hiway
Stabilizers Environmental Ltd., PO Box 225 Silverdale, Auckland.
[7] KheshtAzma Consulting Engineering. Co.
[8] Uromeihy, A. and Nassiri, S.(2006).”Effect of landslides on the development of the districts of
north Tehran City”,IAEG. Paper number 37.
[9] Barar, S.E. and Qing Liu, P.E.(2010) “Time-History finite element dynamic analysis-soil nail
wallsan manuel casino-highland, casino”in San Diego, California