Abstract: Soil nail wall is widely used in supporting foundation pit excavation and brings great social and economic benefits. However, soil nail wall is blindly used in China at present. People are not aware of its limitations and applicable scope, giving rise to problems in the designing and construction which lead to lots of accidents. In view of this, we should have a comprehensive understanding of the action mechanism of soil nail wall. At the same time, we need to understand its superiorities and limitations and pay attention to its construction. This paper lays emphasize on problems in the use of soil nail wall, and gives advices to make it better. What’s more, we discuss the future use of soil nail wall, for example, the durability of soil nail wall, anti-seismic resistance, creep deformation, nondestructive examination, deformation estimation, composite soil nail wall and so on. Research on these aspects will be of far-reaching and promising importance.

Key words: soil nail wall, action mechanism, composite soil nail wall