Fiber-Reinforcement Optimization Using a Soil Approach

Abstract

Fiber products can co-exist with natural system and can provide safe, economical, and long-lived composites. Researchers have added polypropylene fiber to soil and determined that it can improve the geotechnical behavior of the soil. However, they followed the same approach currently being used in concrete. In concrete, the amount of fiber added is usually an arbitrarily specified percentage to improve a specific property of the concrete. The percentage usually varies with the intended use of the concrete.Recently, there has been extensive research performed on the benefit of fiber addition to soils. But none has explained why the fiber content (FC) plays a role in improving the geotechnical properties of the fiber-soil composite. In this research, different approaches, i.e., a concrete approach and metallurgical (micro mechanics) approach are described and a sustainable soil approach is introduced. Using the soil approach, two different fiber types with different lengths were added to Kaolinite clay and the optimized fiber contents were determined for the composites. The soil approach explains why the amount of fiber added improves the geotechnical properties.

Dynamic behavior of fiber-reinforced soil under freeze-thaw cycles

“…Furthermore, the damping ratio decreased with the addition of rubber under low confining pressure (σ c = 50 kPa and 100 kPa) and increased with increase of rubber content under high confining pressure [19]. Moreover, various models and methods related to failure criteria, plastic theory and limit analysis under dynamic loading were developed by many researchers to investigate the dynamic behavior of reinforced soil [3,[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. On the other hand, soil reinforcement with different types of fiber plays a significant role in mechanical and thermal properties of soil.…”

Improving the compaction properties and shear resistance of a sand reinforced with COVID-19 waste mask fibers

“…For a fiber content of 0.2% that exceeds the optimum percentage, the improvement extent became marginal in comparison with the compaction characteristics of pure sand. In fact, Amir-Faryar and Aggour (2014) estimated that extra fibers replace soil particles instead of only filling the voids. Hence, the sand grains cannot be close to each other.…”

“…The studies have shown that the improvement extent of fiber-reinforced soils really depends on the adopted fiber content. For instance, the engineering properties of the reinforced mixtures change with various fiber contents ( Amir-Faryar and Aggour, 2012 , 2014 ). Furthermore, the effectiveness of fiber inclusion is considerably dependent on the tested soil ( Patel and Singh, 2017 ).…”