Engineering Properties of Soils Reinforced by Short Discrete Polypropylene Fiber
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 22, Issue 12
Abstract
In order to understand the engineering properties of soil reinforced by short polypropylene fiber, a series of tests were carried out to study the effect of fiber content and fiber length on the strength of the fiber-reinforced soil, as well as the effect of aggregate size and fiber additives on the engineering properties of the fiber-reinforced soil. It was shown from test results that the unconfined compressive strength (UCS), cohesion, and internal friction angle of fiber-reinforced soil were greater than those of the parent soil; the UCS, cohesion, and internal friction angle of fiber-reinforced soil exhibited an initial increase followed by a rapid decrease with increasing fiber content and fiber length, and hence the optimal fiber content and fiber length were found as 0.3% by weight of the parent soil and 15 mm, respectively, in this investigation. Similar trends were found in the parent soil and the fiber-reinforced soil that the strength declined with an increase in aggregate size and there was a critical size for aggregate breakage between 3.5 and 7.5 mm in average diameter; the presence of polypropylene fiber could effectively contribute to the increases in the strength and stability of the parent soil.
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Acknowledgments
The research presented in this paper was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. UNSPECIFIED40672181) and the State Key Program of National Natural Science of China (Grant No. UNSPECIFIED40730739). The writers are grateful to Dr. Sue Struthers for comments and grammar correction to this paper.
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Published In
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 22 • Issue 12 • December 2010
Pages: 1315 - 1322
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Dec 10, 2008
Accepted: Jun 2, 2010
Published online: Jun 4, 2010
Published in print: Dec 2010
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