PERFORMANCE OF REINFORCED SUBBASE MATERAILS BY GEOCELL AS A BASE LAYER UPOVE WEAK SUBGRADE

Abstract

Over the past few decades, research has focused on the use of geocells and techniques for strengthening poor soils, particularly those used in pavement and foundation engineering .The current study looks at the behavior of an unpaved road on top of a soft clay layer reinforced with a single layer of geocell positioned at the subgrade/subbase interface. A geocell-reinforced laboratory model is exposed to repeated load employing cycle load. In a large testing box (1000mm*1000mm*1000mm), unreinforced and reinforced subbase over soft subgrade were built. The test findings demonstrate that utilizing a geocell reinforcement layer causes a rise in the number of cycles and stress distribution, as well as a decrease in displacement on the soft subgrade surface on the reinforced models compared to the equivalent unreinforced one, for the same rutting value (85mm). The rate of increase in failure time about (79, 69.1, 61) % for 150, 230 and 300 mm thickness respectively. So far, investigations have indicated that geocell reinforcement reduces the vertical loads transported towards weak subgrades by roughly the redaction rate of maximum vertical stress at interface about (15.5, 14.7, 8.1) % for (150,230,300) mm subbase thickness respectively.