Tensile strength characteristics of contaminated and compacted sand-bentonite mixtures

Abstract

A theoretical and experimental study of the unconfined penetration test (UP) method was conducted to determine the tensile strength of contaminated and compacted sand-bentonite mixtures, which are used widely in the landfill construction sites as a clay liner. To do this, the original UP device and experimental procedure were modified to reduce the measurement errors and named as the improved unconfined penetration (IUP) test. Experiments were carried out to examine the variation in tensile strength as a function of disk diameter, loading rate and pH level. The results of the experiments provided the following important findings. The tensile strength increases with an increase in the disk diameter. The tensile strength is not sensitive to the loading rate in the range of 0.1%/min–1.0%/min. A specimen compacted with a low pH value of water shows a high tensile strength, because a lower pH solution increases soil particle bonding stresses.