Evaluation of the Shear Strength Behaviour of Polypropylene and Carbon Fibre Reinforced Cohesive Soils

Costas A Anagnostopoulos,Dimitrios Tzetzis,Kyriakos Berketis

doi:10.19026/rjaset.7.805

Costas A Anagnostopoulos, Dimitrios Tzetzis + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.19026/rjaset.7.805

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Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of various parameters involved, such as the strength properties of fibres, the relative size of fibres and grains and the rate of shear on the shear strength of polypropylene or carbon fibre reinforced cohesive soils with different percentage loading of fibres. The experimental results reveal that the inclusion of polypropylene fibres in soil increases considerably the shear strength. Contrarily, the inclusion of the carbon fibres did not produce a clear beneficial effect. In both cases, the shear strengths results are attributed to the different micro mechanisms involved in the fibre/soil interactions as studied through scanning electron micrographs. A significant outcome from the current work is that the strength of the reinforced soil composites is independent of the fibre mechanical indexes.

Highlights

The use of fibre inclusion for the improvement of the mechanical properties of weak soils is a method that has lately seen widespread attention in the scientific field of civil engineering
(c) Fig. 3: Variation of shear stress with horizontal displacement for unreinforced and reinforced silty clay obtained from Consolidated Un-drained tests (CU) tests at normal stress of, (a) 50 kPa, (b) 100 kPa, (c) 200 kPa
The experimental results developed in this study showed that the addition of polypropylene fibres in cohesive soils has a considerable effect on their shear strength

Summary

Introduction

The use of fibre inclusion for the improvement of the mechanical properties of weak soils is a method that has lately seen widespread attention in the scientific field of civil engineering. Applications aiming to achieve increased soil strength by mixing the soil with fibres are stabilization of soil slopes (Gregory and Chill, 1998), embankment construction with low strength soil, minimization of expansion-contraction cracks in condensed clay layers (Ziegler et al, 1998), mechanical stabilization of flexible roads (Choubane et al, 1999) and landing strip pavements base courses (Webster and Santoni, 1997; Tingle et al, 1999), improvement of bearing capacity (Tang et al, 2007) and soil surface erosion protection. Many researchers have focused their research on the mechanical behavior of fibre reinforced sandy soils (Consoli et al, 2002; Shewbridge and Sitar, 1990; Murray et al, 2000; Maher and Gray, 1990; Gray and Ohashi, 1983; Bauer and Oancea, 1996)

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