Experimental Analysis of Strength and Deformation Behavior of Soils Reinforced with Building-Derived Materials

Abstract

Recycling of construction and demolition waste (CDW) materials and reusing them in construction is an effective way to dispose of them. Simultaneously, CDW can be used as a substitute for materials whose natural resources are getting depleted. This paper is focused on reusing building-derived materials (BDM), the primary subset of CDW, in geotechnical applications. In order to study the mechanical characteristics of soil blended with different percentages of BDM, a series of triaxial compression tests are conducted at different confining pressures to evaluate their strength and stress–strain behavior. Results from tests conducted with locally available sand and red soil admixed with varying proportions of BDM indicate that 17–23% by weight of soil is the optimum BDM content to be used as an admixture. Increase in confining pressures leads to strain hardening. To describe strength characteristics, the hyperbolic model is adopted to analyze the response at smaller strains. Parameters like cohesion, friction angle, peak stress are obtained from experimental results. The model indicates that failure ratio and tangential modulus depend upon peak load obtained from the experiments. The hyperbolic model results are found to be in good agreement with the experimental results.