How are reinforced soil retaining walls replaced when they wear out?

Question

A reinforced soil retaining wall is a system where a thin retaining wall is anchored into the ground it holds using plastic meshes. The wall surface is typically assembled of small concrete blocks (about 0.3 meters thick and similar length and height) and once every several rows of blocks are assembled ground is being put behind the blocks, leveled and compressed and plastic mesh is being put onto ground and onto blocks exposed horizontal surface, then the same is repeated until the entire wall height is built. The wall is either vertical or very steep.

What happens when the concrete wall wears out? If we disassemble it then the mass of the ground should erode quickly and collapse. How is the wall replaced once it wears out?

Answer 1

If the concrete is only moderately damaged but the plastic meshes are intact, the most obvious approach is to cast a new concrete wall against the old concrete blocks. That would require drilling a large number of steel anchors into the concrete blocks first to be able to transfer forces between the plastic meshes and the new concrete.

If the plastic meshes are also damaged, it is a possibility to also drill ground anchors into the soil behind the retaining wall and grout them in order to fix them to the ground well behind the face of the wall. Using that sort of approach, you would essentially be constructing an entirely new retaining wall next to the old one.