Experimental Evaluation of Additional Shear Strength for Vetiver Root-Reinforced Soil
Publication: Geo-Congress 2024
ABSTRACT
Slope instability-related damage is a major issue all over the world, including Bangladesh. Every year, slope failure occurs all over the country and causes major financial losses. A variety of methods are available for addressing this issue, but conventional slope protection methods require large and long-term investments. Hard engineering solutions can also be temporary, only transferring the problem from one location to another. A viable solution to this problem may be to use bio-engineering technology applying vegetation. Vegetation as a bio-engineering technique for slope stabilization can improve the shear strength and reduce the erosion potential of soils. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of vegetation in improving the shear strength of soil. Vetiver grass which is a commonly found in Bangladesh was selected for the study. Roots were collected from uprooted vetiver grass found in a naturally grown land. To prepare the root-reinforced soil samples, roots were chopped according to different lengths (1.25–5 cm) and mixed in different root content (3%–12% of the dry weight of the soil sample) and moisture content of soil (10%–25%). It was observed that root-reinforced soil samples have a maximum of 88.2% higher shear strength compared to root-free samples. The added cohesion of vetiver rooted soil has a positive correlation with the root length, but for the root content shear strength increases up to an optimum root content and then decreases. The results from the present study have also been compared to the previous studies and found in good agreement with each other.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Geo-Congress 2024
Pages: 207 - 217
History
Published online: Feb 22, 2024
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Business management
- Developing countries
- Ecosystems
- Environmental engineering
- Foundation construction
- Foundations
- Geomechanics
- Geotechnical engineering
- Material mechanics
- Material properties
- Materials engineering
- Practice and Profession
- Shear strength
- Slopes
- Soil analysis
- Soil mechanics
- Soil mixing
- Soil properties
- Soil strength
- Soil water
- Strength of materials
- Vegetation
Authors
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