Soil Subgrade Stabilization Using Non-woven Polypropylene Geotextile

Abstract

Roads are the quintessential component for the social as well as economic upliftment of a country. Our country has a total road network of greater than 60 lakh kilometers of which 79% consists of rural roads. Around 20% of land area of our country is covered with the kind of soils having low shear strength and California bearing ratio (CBR) values. The pavement which is constructed over such soils deteriorates significantly under heavy wheel load which leads to substantial enhancement in maintenance and construction costs. To overcome such situations the soil reinforcement techniques have to be resorted to as replacement and removal of soil would lead to heavy economic liability. In this work, an attempt was made to study the effects of non-woven synthetic geotextile on the strength behavior of the soil. The geotextile was placed in single as well as multiple layers from the top of mold at different depths in soil subgrade and optimum moisture content (OMC), maximum dry density (MDD), soaked CBR, and unconfined compressive strength (UCS) values were determined experimentally. Multiple linear regression models were developed for predicting soaked CBR and UCS. Maximum improvement of 66% in CBR and 45% in UCS was reported when the soil sample was reinforced with double-layer geotextile (i.e., 25 mm and 50 mm).