Experimental investigation on using plastic wastes to enhance several engineering properties of soil through stabilization

Abstract

Soil stabilization is a process of altering the properties of soil by physical or chemical means. It leads to improvement of engineering quality of soil such as density, permeability, bearing capacity, shear strength etc. Soil stabilization can be easily achieved by means of certain chemicals or physical processes such as by using cement, lime, fly ash etc but here we will try to use plastic wastes for this purpose. By using this product, we can make use of plastics which always lies around our environment to pollute it. Use of plastics is increasing in day to day life and our society is strongly attracted towards it but the disposal of such a huge mass is impossible and if possible creates land pollution like problems. We can also save a lot of Cement, Lime, Fly ash which was supposed to be used in soil stabilization and can now be used in some other construction purposes. A series of tests were carried out on soil to check the improvement in engineering properties like standard proctor test, unconfined compression test and California bearing ratio test. We can have three benefits from this project like utilization of natural resources, Economy and waste management. Thus a waste thought to be harmful and dangerous to our society can now be converted to a boon to our society.