Effect of Pocket Size of Bamboo Geocell Filled with Sand and Recycled Asphalt Pavement Over Soft Clay Bed

Abstract

AbstractFor low-volume unpaved roads, bamboo geocell may be a possible solution to improve soft subgrade bearing capacity. Geocell confines its infill material and acts as a deep beam over soft subgrade. The performance of the geocell depends on various factors like the width of the footing (B), the width of the geocell (b), the height of the geocell (h), pocket size of the geocell (d), the relative density of the infill materials (Rd), seam strength, etc. The present study effect of pocket size has been investigated by performing model plate load tests on bamboo geocell reinforced sand and RAP bed. In this study, three different pocket sizes, i.e. 0.8B, 1B and 1.3B, were used. The test result shows that the load-bearing capacity was improved by reducing the pocket size of the geocell for both infill materials, i.e. sand and RAP. With infill material sand, the load-bearing capacity was improved by 13.6, 11.4 and 8.3 times the unreinforced subgrade for pocket size of 0.8B, 1B and 1.3B. However, with RAP, the improvement was 16.2, 14 and 11.2 times with pocket size 0.8B, 1B and 1.3B. Therefore, the performance of RAP is more than the sand as an infill material. The bearing capacity was found inversely proportional to the pocket size of the bamboo geocell. The pocket size should be less than the footing diameter and found higher performance.KeywordsBamboo geocellModel plate load testRAPSandPocket size