Abstract
The use of polypropylene fibers as a geosynthetic in infrastructures is a promising ground treatment method with applications in the enhancement of the bearing capacity of foundations, slope rehabilitation, strengthening of backfills, as well as the improvement of the seismic behavior of geo-systems. Despite the large number of studies published in the literature investigating the properties of fiber-reinforced soils, less attention has been given in the evaluation of the dynamic properties of these composites, especially in examining damping characteristics and the influence of fiber inclusion and content. In the present study, the effect of polypropylene fiber inclusion on the small-strain damping ratio of sands with different gradations and various particle shapes was investigated through resonant column (macroscopic) experiments. The macroscopic test results suggested that the damping ratio of the mixtures tended to increase with increasing fiber content. Accordingly, a new expression was proposed which considers the influence of fiber content in the estimation of the small-strain damping of polypropylene fiber-sand mixtures and it can be complementary of damping modeling from small-to-medium strains based on previously developed expressions in the regime of medium strains. Additional insights were attempted to be obtained on the energy dissipation and contribution of fibers of these composite materials by performing grain-scale tests which further supported the macroscopic experimental test results. It was also attempted to interpret, based on the grain-scale tests results, the influence of fiber inclusion in a wide spectrum of properties for fiber-reinforced sands providing some general inferences on the contribution of polypropylene fibers on the constitutive behavior of granular materials.
Highlights
Ground improvement using fibers as a geosynthetic has received significant interest in geotechnical engineering research and practice
The test results indicated that the presence of fibers led to an increase of small-strain damping ratio
Using a power-law type of fitting, the effect of fiber content was isolated and incorporated into the development of a new expression for the determination of small-strain damping ratio for fiber-sand mixtures subjected to isotropic confining stress
Summary
Ground improvement using fibers as a geosynthetic has received significant interest in geotechnical engineering research and practice. Based on the current state-of-the-art, the use of fibers as a means of ground improvement is in general favorable for large deformation problems, i.e., increasing the shear strength of soils at peak and critical states, or improving the liquefaction resistance of soils [5,14,15,16]. It is more conflicting the influence of fibers on the performance of soils at smaller strains. Recent published data by Li and Senetakis [23] and
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