1. International Journal JOURNAL OF ADVANCED RESEARCH Technology (IJARET),
INTERNATIONAL of Advanced Research in Engineering and IN ENGINEERING
ISSN 0976 – 6480(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6499(Online) Volume 5, Issue 1, January (2014), © IAEME
AND TECHNOLOGY (IJARET)
ISSN 0976 - 6480 (Print)
ISSN 0976 - 6499 (Online)
Volume 5, Issue 1, January (2014), pp. 45-51
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IJARET
©IAEME
STUDY ON THE PERFORMANCE OF LEATHER SCRAPS IN FLEXIBLE
PAVEMENT SYSTEM
P. Balamurugan1,
Dr. A. Ilanthirayan2,
S. Boobathiraja3,
K. Vinusha4.
1&3
Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engg, Erode Sengunthar Engineering College,
Erode, India
2
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Governments Arts College, Karur, India
4
Sr.Design Engineer, L&T, Chennai, India
ABSTRACT
Weak soils are most likely to cause damage to all structures including road pavements. The
losses due to extensive damage to highways running over weak soil subgrades are estimated to be in
crores of rupees every year. Various remedial measures like soil replacement, pre-wetting, moisture
control, lime stabilization have been practiced with varied degree of success. However, these
techniques suffer from certain limitations respect to their adaptability like longer time periods,
pulverization, mixing and high cost for hauling suitable refill material for soil replacement.
Reinforced earth technique has been gaining popularity in the field of pavement due to its high
versatility and flexibility. The growing interest in utilizing waste materials in civil engineering
applications has opened the use of waste such as waste plastics, waste tire shreds and waste Glasses
in pavements. In this project waste leather scraps is used as one such reinforcing material, in
subgrade and subbase of flexible pavement system
Keywords - Pavement, Leather Scraps, CBR , UCC
I. INTRODUCTION
The soil reinforcement technique is well established and is used in variety of applications
such as construction of retaining walls, embankments, earth dams, and foundation beds for heavy
structures on soft grounds. The investigations done earlier on fiber reinforced soil indicate that
strength properties of fiber-reinforced soils consisting of randomly distributed fibers mainly depend
on fiber content and fiber-surface friction. Random reinforcement of soils with natural fiber and
synthetic fibers is potentially an effective technique for increasing soil strength.
45

2. International Journal of Advanced Research in Engineering and Technology (IJARET),
ISSN 0976 – 6480(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6499(Online) Volume 5, Issue 1, January (2014), © IAEME
The interest in utilizing waste materials in civil engineering applications has been growing. It
opened the possibility of constructing reinforced soil structure with industrial waste. In recent years,
applications of industrial wastes in road construction are studied with great interest. The use of these
materials in road making is based on technical, economic, and ecological criteria. The lack of
traditional road materials and the protection of the environment make it imperative to investigate the
possible use of these materials carefully. Further the cost of extracting good quality of natural
material is also increasing. It has become essential to look for alternative materials for highway
construction.
Materials such as fly-ash from thermal power plants and other coal fired industries, blast
furnace slag from steel industries, cement kiln dust from cement related industries, phosphogypsum
from phosphatatic fertilizer industries, waste plastics, waste tire shreds, waste Glasses and pumice
stone and many other solid wastes have already proved to be useful for road construction by
increasing the load carrying capacity of the pavement structure. This increase in load carrying
capacity results in either an improved service life or cost savings due to reduced layer requirements.
The possible use of these materials will provide two-fold benefits:
(a)
(b)
It will help clear valuable land of huge dumps of Wastes.
It will also help to preserve the natural reserves of aggregates.
In this project waste leather scraps was used as one such reinforcing material, in subgrade and
subbase of flexible pavement system. Tamilnadu has a large network of leather industries located in
different parts of the state and many more are planned in near future. In this project the effect of
leather scraps in subgrade were studied. .Subgrade soil used for test was collected from a pit at
Government College of Technology. The basic properties of soil were determined .To study the effect
of leather scraps, Standard Proctor Compaction test, Modified Proctor Compaction test , CBR tests
and UCC with light and heavy energy of compaction are performed in the subgrade soil reinforced
with various percentages of leather namely 5%, 10%, 15% and 20%.
2. METHODOLOGY
1) Soil samples for the test were collected from a pit at Government College of Technology.
2) Leather Scraps were collected from leather industries at Erode.
3) Necessary laboratory test were conducted with the collected soil sample to identify the soil type
and properties.
4) General properties of leather scraps were determined.
5) Modified Proctors Compaction test were carried out.
6) Test samples were prepared .CBR tests and UCC tests was done on both reinforced and
unreinforced soil to determine the optimum leather content.
3. RESULTS
3.1 Soil Properties
The tests were carried out as per IS norms. Type of subgrade soil collected for the project is
cohesive soil predominantly clay. The samples are collected from pit at Government College of
Technology at a depth of about 1m to 1.5m.The Various Properties of the subgrade soil is
summarized in Table 1.
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3. International Journal of Advanced Research in Engineering and Technology (IJARET),
ISSN 0976 – 6480(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6499(Online) Volume 5, Issue 1, January (2014), © IAEME
3.2 Leather Properties
The leather wastes used for the test were collected from leather industries at Erode. The scraps
passing through 20mm sieve and retaining on 4.75 mm sieve were used for this project. The Various
Properties of the leather are summarized in Table 2.
TABLE 1 : Properties Of Soil
Test conducted
Properties
Results
Determination of
Moisture Content
Determination of
Specific Gravity
Moisture Content
16.17%
Specific Gravity
2.73
Percentage of sand
Percentage of silt
Percentage of clay
Soil classification
35.4%
19.96%
44.43%
CH
Grain Size
Distribution
Attreberg Limit
TABLE 2: Properties of Leather
Properties
Results
2
Tensile strength
100 kg/cm to 500 kg/cm2
Resistance to wear and tear
Tear load carried by 0.8mm
thick specimen is > 15 N
Resistance to flexing
No cracks found after 15000
flexes
Durability
20-40 years when burried
3.3 Laboratory Tests and Results
A) Proctor Compaction test:
Two types of proctor compaction tests namely Standard Proctor Compaction test as per
IS:2720(Part7) – 1997 and Modified Proctor Compaction test as per IS:2720(Part8) – 1995 were
carried out on the soil, with and without leather scraps .The results obtained are tabulated in Table 3.
B) California Bearing Ratio test:
The test was conducted as per IS:2720(Part 16) – 1997.The soil samples were prepared and
tested for CBR values. The soil samples were prepared with both light and heavy compaction at
OMC, with and without leather scraps. The results obtained are shown in Figure 1 and values are
tabulated in Table 4.
C) Unconfined Compressive Strength test:
The test was conducted as per IS:2720(Part 10)– 1995. The UCC test were conducted on the
UCC specimen prepared by compacting soil at OMC in proctor mould, with and without leather
scraps, mixed with varying leather content. The results obtained are shown in figure 2 and tabulated
in Table 5.
47

4. International Journal of Advanced Research in Engineering and Technology (IJARET),
ISSN 0976 – 6480(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6499(Online) Volume 5, Issue 1, January (2014), © IAEME
Table 3 : Results of Proctor Compaction Tests
Type of compaction
Standard Proctor
compaction
As per
IS:2720(Part 7)–
1997
Modified Proctor
Compaction
As per
IS:2720(Part8)–
1995
Percentage of
leather
0
5
10
15
20
0
5
10
15
20
OMC
In %
15
15
15
16
16
17
18.5
19
19.6
20.5
MDD
g/cc
1.62
1.62
1.62
1.6
1.6
1.7
1.66
1.6
1.49
1.3
Figure1: Load Vs Penetration(Heavy compaction)
Table 4 : Results of CBR Tests
CBR at
CBR at
CBR
Percentage
2.5mm
5mm
of Leather penetration penetration
In (%)
In (%)
CBR test 0
2.26
1.9
on sample 5
2.5
2.5
prepared 10
2.7
2.6
with light 15
2.8
2.6
compaction 20
3
2.7
CBR test 0
2.9
5.1
on sample 5
5.2
7.5
prepared 10
7.2
9.2
with heavy 15
8.5
11.1
compaction 20
10.2
12.6
48
CBR
In %
2.26
2.5
2.7
2.8
3
5.1
7.5
9.2
11.1
12.6

5. International Journal of Advanced Research in Engineering and Technology (IJARET),
ISSN 0976 – 6480(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6499(Online) Volume 5, Issue 1, January (2014), © IAEME
Figure 2 : Stress Vs Strain Curve from UCC with heavy compaction
Experiment
UCC test on
sample prepared
with
light
compaction
UCC test on
sample prepared
with
light
compaction
Table 5 : Results of UCC test
Percentage of
Unconfined
leather
Compressive
Strength
KN/m2
0
290
5
312
10
321
15
318
0
379
5
404
10
484
15
442
Cohesive
Strength
KN/m2
145
156
16
159
189
202
242
221
The optimum amount of leather that gives maximum load carrying capacity can be
determined from Figure 3 and Figure 4.
Figure 3: CBR Vs % Leather
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6. International Journal of Advanced Research in Engineering and Technology (IJARET),
ISSN 0976 – 6480(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6499(Online) Volume 5, Issue 1, January (2014), © IAEME
Figure 4: UCC Vs % Leather
4. DISCUSSION
From table 4 its clear that the CBR tests on soil sample with 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% of
leather scraps showed marginal improvement in CBR values under light compaction but significant
improvement was obtained in CBR vaues under heavy compaction on.
Similarly from table 5 its clear that the UCC values of soil sample with 5% and 10% leather
was increased when compared with the UCC value of unreinforced soil and the value got decreased
with further increase in leather percentage.
Optimum amount of leather which gives maximum load carrying capacity can be determined
from Figure 3 and Figure 4. The CBR value of reinforced soil sample is found to increase even with
20% of leather but the UCC value of reinforced soil sample increases with 10% of leather but
decreases with addition of 5% of leather. So the optimum leather content which gives maximum load
carrying capacity is obtained as 10%.
5. CONCLUSIONS
The following conclusions are made from above laboratory tests and results.
1.
2.
3.
4.
The soil sample used for this project is classified as CH and the results can be concluded for
this type of soil.
Waste leather scraps mixed with soil showed significant improvement in CBR value under
heavy compaction but the improvement was marginal under light compaction.
Waste leather scraps mixed with soil showed significant improvement in UCC values under
heavy compaction but the improvement was marginal under light compaction .The UCC value
increased upto 10% of leather and decreased with further leather content.
With optimum amount of leather the increase in CBR is found to be 4% which reduce the
pavement thickness to a greater extend.
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