Soil strength improvement by reinforcing soil with geotextiles

Abstract

In recent times, geosynthetic products are widely utilized in the construction sector and particularly in the field of Geotechnical Engineering. Geosynthetics are the synthetic products used mainly within the soil to perform various functions. In this paper, an attempt has been made to utilize Woven geotextiles (WG) and Non-woven geotextiles (NWG) as reinforcement within soil to enhance the strength of subgrade soil. 2 types of coarse-grained soil, soil with high fines content and soil with low fines content were utilized in the experimental work. WG and NWG were placed at varying depths of H/5, 2H/5, 3H/5 and 4H/5 from top of the soil specimen (where H is the height of soil specimen), to find the enhancement in soaked & unsoaked California Bearing Ratio (CBR) strength of soil with respect to that of unreinforced soil. Based on the experimental results, improvement in CBR strength of soil reinforced with geotextile and the ideal location of placement of geotextile within the soil thickness varied according to the soil type and this may be attributed to the presence of varied percentages of fines within soil. Also, the soil reinforced with WG was observed to be more effective in terms of strength gain as compared to that of soil reinforced with NWG. Improvement in CBR strength of subgrade soil reinforced with geotextiles leads to reduced pavement thickness thus resulting in a cost-effective construction.