Cracking Characteristics of Cemented Fiber Reinforced Fine-Grained Soils

The unsaturated soil behavior is one of the most significant areas of research in the geotechnical engineering. Desiccation cracking is one of such issues which results in variation of permeability, strength, and creation of zones of weakness. The cracks develop an irregular and/or preferential flow pattern for contaminant transport, thereby affecting the functionality of containment structures, such as for nuclear waste and hazardous wastes. Earlier studies depicted that, cracking characteristics of fine grained soils are mainly influenced by environmental conditions, soil type (mineralogy), evaporation rate, thickness of soil, and suggested various methods to arrest cracking using surfactants and controlling the evaporation rate in the soils. In lieu of the situation, where the cracks initiate due to poor tensile strength and high suction values, the above techniques may not be any more valid. In such situation, various other methods such as arresting plasticity, increasing the tensile strength of the soil by fiber reinforcement has been found effective. To demonstrate this, investigations were conducted in this study on soil specimen subjected to drying and thereby cracking. The present study counters the cracking by adding cement with the addition of sand and fiber. The cracking index of the soil is characterized by the parameter crack intensity factor (CIF), computed resorting to image analysis. Based on the present study, it has been observed that the least crack intensity factor have been succeeded for fiber-reinforced cemented compared to fiber-reinforced un-cemented soil.