The inclusions of geosynthetic materials (fibers, geomembranes and geotextiles) is a new improvement technique that ensures uniformity in the soil during construction. The use of tension resisting discreet inclusions like polypropylene fibers has attracted a significant amount of attention these past years in the improvement of soil performance in a cost-efficient manner. A series of direct shear box tests were conducted on unreinforced and reinforced Chlef sand with different contents of fibers (0, 0.25, 0.5 and0.75%) in order to study the mechanical behavior of sand reinforced with polypropylene fibers. Samples were prepared at three different relative densities 30%, 50% and 80% representing loose, medium dense and dense states,respectively, and performed at normal stresses of 50, 100 and 200 kPa. The experimental results show that the mechanical characteristics are improved with the addition of polypropylene fibers. The inclusion of randomly distributed fibers has a significant effect on the shear strength and dilation of sandy soil. The increase in strength is a function of fiber content, where it has been shown that the mechanical characteristics improve with the increase in fiber content up to 0.75%, this improvement is more significant at a higher normal stress and relative density.
This paper aims to evaluate the influence of soil deposition methods on the shear strength of reinforced sand using a triaxial test. Non-woven geotextile layers were used as reinforcement in the experiment to reconstitute specimens of natural sand prepared at loose relative density (Dr = 30%). Arrangements of reinforcement layers (0, 1 and 2 layers) on soil samples were prepared using two different deposition methods [dry funnel pluviation (DFP) and wet deposition (WD)] and consolidated under three levels of confining pressures. Result shows that geotextile inclusion improves the mechanical behavior of sand; a significant increase in the shear strength is obtained by adding up layers of reinforcement. However, it reveals also that the soil-geotextile reinforcement interface efficiency is directly related to the number of layers and the soil dispositional method as well as their initial state. Since, the DFP method exhibits samples strain hardening compared to the WD samples which is very sensitive to static liquefaction. It is important to note that the difference in behavior of test on reinforced WD samples was attributed to the strain at failure, where unreinforced soil tested at ($${\text{p}}_{{\text{c}}}^{{\prime }} = {50}\,{\text{kPa}}$$
p
c
′
=
50
kPa
) has attained complete liquefaction at small stain (εfa = 1.6% for sample tested at 50 kPa of confining pressure) compared to reinforced samples tests in which failure envelope be found for more axial strain.
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