Polypropylene fiber reinforced cohesive soil - constro facilitator

11/26/2019 Polypropylene Fiber Reinforced Cohesive Soil - Constro Facilitator
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Polypropylene Fiber Reinforced Cohesive Soil
Polypropylene reinforcement is a common method of strengthening soil. The aim of the present study
is to understand the behavior of randomly distributed discrete polypropylene reinforced cohesive soil
subjected to different strain rates. Unconsolidated undrained triaxial tests were conducted with 5
different polypropylene contents (0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 % by dry weight of soil) at 4 different strain
rates (0.5, 1, 3 and 6 %/minute). For unreinforced soils, the failure deviator stress initially increased,
then either decreased or remained constant with increase in strain rate. But for reinforced soil, the
stress values showed an increasing trend with rise in strain rate. It was found that for reinforced
soils, the failure deviator stress was minimum and maximum corresponding to 0.5 and 6 %/minute
strain rates respectively. With increase in rate of strain, the value of cohesion initially increased and
then decreased beyond an optimum value of reinforcement for most of the cases. The value of angle
of internal friction did not show any specific trend corresponding to the change in strain rates.
Introduction
Reinforcing a soil mass is an efficient and proven technique to improve its engineering properties. The
principal aim of incorporating reinforcement in soil is to improve the bearing capacity and stability,
and to decrease the deformations and settlements. Polymer such as polypropylene (PP) reinforcement
in the form of discrete fiber is a popular and well established method of soil reinforcement. PP fibers
are used to increase shear strength, to minimize volumetric shrinkage and swelling of soil. The
preponderance of published research work is about the effect of randomly distributed fibers on
enhancing the properties of cohesionless soils [1-7]. Some of the noteworthy investigations on the
strength behavior of fiber reinforced fine grained soils are by Freitag [8], Nataraj and McManis [9],
Puppala and Musenda [10], Tang et al. [11]. Zaimoglu and Yetimoglu [12] investigated the behavior
of polypropylene reinforced fine grained soil and reported that the unconfined compression strength
tended to increase when the fiber content was increased. Masoumi et al. [13] carried out
improvement of soft soil with both polypropylene fiber and polyvinyl acetate resin. Sharma [14] used
By Siddhartha Sengupta - November 20, 2019

waste polypropylene fiber and cement kiln dust to improve strength of clayey soil. It was found that
upon addition of fibers, unconfined compressive strength and California bearing ratio increased
appreciably.
One of the most important factors controlling the strength of soil is the strain rate to which the soil is
subjected [15-18]. The responses of the soil get affected if the loading time/ strain rate changes.
Previously, investigations had been performed to observe the influences of strain rate on effective
stress parameters [19], undrained strength {20], and stiffness [21] of soils. Building up of pore
pressure at low strain rate (and constant moisture content) was opined to be a crucial parameter for
strength reduction [17]. Abraham et al. [22] observed the influence of strain rate on the strength
parameters of clay. It was found that there was a rise in undrained strength as the strain rate
increased in triaxial tests. Martindale et al. [23] investigated the response of a strain rate dependent
clay constitutive model with parametric sensitivity and uncertainty quantification. Alam et al. [24]
investigated the behavior of sandstone under different strain rates in uniaxial loading. The failure
strain and the modulus of elasticity increased with increase in strain rate. Enomoto et al. [25]
conducted a series of drained triaxial compression tests to evaluate the rate-dependent stress-strain
behavior of gravelly soils.
Until now, few studies have been conducted to observe the behavior of polymer reinforced soil at
different strain rates. But, in practical cases, there may be variations in the time during which the
load is applied or there may be variations in strain rates; hence the strength and deformation
characteristics/ behavior of the soil-fiber matrix will be affected. The principal objectives of this study
are to investigate the effect of strain rate on strength of cohesive soil reinforced with randomly
distributed discrete polypropylene fibers and to establish the correlation between strain rate, polymer
content, deviator stress, cohesion and angle of internal friction.
Experimental Investigations
Table 1 Properties of soil
Property Value
Specific gravity 2.28
Liquid limit (%) 41.40
Plastic limit (%) 26.25
Plasticity index (%) 15.15
Maximum dry density (kg m ) 1680
Optimum moisture content (%) 18.25
Clay (%)* 28
Silt (%)* 57
Sand (%)* 15
USCS [26] classification ML
IS:1498-1970 (Reaffirmed 2007) [27] classification MI
* As per IS: 1498 – 1970 (Reaffirmed 2007) [27]
The soil sample was collected locally from Mesra, Ranchi, Jharkhand in India. Soil lumps were broken
into small pieces and was screened through a sieve of 4.75 mm aperture to segregate the soil from
pebbles, roots etc. The properties of soil are enlisted in Table 1. The soil was classified as “ML” and
“MI” according to USCS [26] and IS: 1498-1970 (Reaffirmed 2007) [27] respectively. Polypropylene
fibers of 0.05 mm thickness, 2.5 mm width were collected from local market and cut to 5 mm length
and were used as reinforcement. The properties of polypropylene are presented in Table 2.
-3

Table 2 Properties of polypropylene
Property Value
Young’s modulus (MPa) 2539.073
Stress at maximum load (MPa) 134.468
Strain at maximum load (%) 787.083
Stress at upper yield (MPa) 86.193
Strain at upper yield (%) 12.083
The soil was mixed with the randomly distributed discrete polymer fiber in different proportions (0,
0.1, 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4 %) and Standard Proctor tests were conducted to determine the maximum dry
density and optimum moisture contents. The results are shown in Table 3. These showed that with
increase in percentage of reinforcement, both maximum dry density as well as the optimum moisture
content decreased. The fall in dry density may be attributed to the reduction of average unit weight of
solids [28] i.e. mixture of soil and fiber with increase in fiber content. Also, the reduction in optimum
moisture content might have happened due to drop in water absorption capacity of the soil-fiber
matrix with increase in quantity of fiber.
Table 3 Standard proctor test results
PP fiber content
(%)
Maximum dry density
(kg m )
Optimum moisture
content (%)
0.0 1680 18.25
0.1 1650 18.02
0.2 1610 17.68
0.3 1560 17.30
0.4 1520 16.95
Soil samples for triaxial tests were prepared by initial dry mixing of oven dried soil and the
corresponding quantity of randomly distributed discrete fiber (0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4 % by weight
of oven dried soil). Then water was added to the mix according to the optimum moisture content as
per the results obtained from standard proctor test. Unconsolidated undrained triaxial tests were
conducted with samples having 38 mm diameter and 76 mm height at cell pressures (σ ) of 70, 140,
210 kPa to get the values of cohesion and angle of internal friction of reinforced and unreinforced soil.
Behavior of soil (reinforced and unreinforced) at four different strain rates of 0.5, 1, 3, and 6
%/minute were observed. As per “ASTM D 2850 – 95 (Reapproved 1999) – Standard test method for
UU triaxial compression test on cohesive soils” [29], strain rates of approximately 1 %/minute and
0.3 %/minute may be used for plastic soil and brittle soil (such as soil with very low water content)
respectively. In the current investigation, though the soil specimen was not brittle, still experiments
were conducted under 0.5 %/minute strain rate to have an idea of the behavior of the soil at such a
low rate. High strain rates such as 5 %/minute are used to evaluate the response of soil under
various field conditions for example fast installation process of pile and projectile penetration, rapid
application of surcharge, rapid excavation, aircraft wheel loading on runways etc. [Sudan and Sachan
(2017)].
The deviator stress –strain responses, variation in cohesion and angle of internal friction for different
polypropylene proportions and strain rates were observed. In all experiments, failure deviator stress
was considered as the stress corresponding to an axial strain of 15 % as per “ASTM D 2850 – 95
(Reapproved 1999) – Standard test method for UU triaxial compression test on cohesive soils” [29],
or corresponding to physical failure of the sample, whichever occurred earlier.
-3
3

Results and Discussions
Characteristics of Stress-Strain Curves and Variation in Failure Deviator Stress
Typical plots of deviator stress-axial strain for unreinforced soil are shown in Figure 1. It was found
that the failure deviator stress corresponding to 0.5 % /minute strain rate was least. As the strain
rate increased from 0.5 to 1 % /minute, the stress values (corresponding to a particular magnitude of
axial strain) also increased. In experiments
Fig. 1 Typicalstress-strain curves for unreinforced soil
performed at a slower rate of strain, comparatively more time had been permitted for structural
breakdown, hence a higher pore pressure at failure was generated leading to decreased strength.
Again, on increasing the rate of strain from 1 to 3 %/minute, deviator stress decreased in general, or
almost remained equal (to stresses corresponding to 1 %/ minute); this probably happened due to
disintegration of the inter particle bond at higher strain rate. On increasing the strain rate from 3 to 6
%/minute, the stress went down further. For axial strain up to about 8 %, the stresses were even
below than those corresponding to 0.5 %/minute strain rate. This was also caused due to breakage of
inter particle bond at elevated rate of testing. To summarize the above behavior, it may be said that
the magnitude of the stress depends on the combined effects of generation of excess pore pressure
at lower strain rate, as well as on disintegration of particle bonds at a higher rate of strain.
For reinforced soils, irrespective of polypropylene percentage, the failure deviator stress was
minimum and maximum corresponding to 0.5 %//minute and 6 %/minute strain rates respectively.
Typical plots for above are shown in Figure 2. In this case, breaking of inter particle bond at higher
strain rate was outdone by the strength induced by the fibers. Also, in the majority of the
experiments conducted with polypropylene reinforced soil no definite peak of stress was reached even
at 15 % axial strain. This could be a manifestation of the ductile behavior induced by the fiber
inclusions.
Fig. 2 Typicalstress-strain curves for reinforced soil

The percentage increase in deviator stress with reference to 0.5 %/minute strain rate (corresponding
to the same cell pressure) are shown in Table 4 (a) to Table 4(e). It may be seen from Table 4 (a)
that for soil without reinforcement and cell pressure (σ )= 70 kPa, the increase in deviator stress
corresponding to 1, 3, and 6 %/minute strain rate were almost same and above 90 % in each case.
The magnitude of rise of stress for σ = 210 kPa were comparatively less (around 10 to 20 %)
corresponding to different rate of strain (1, 3, and 6 %/minute). The increase in deviator stress was
highest (119.87 %) at cell pressure of 140 kPa (3 %/minute). Table 4 (b) indicates that for 0.1 % PP
reinforcement, the deviator stress increment was as low as 6.72 % (σ = 210 kPa, 1 %/minute strain
rate), and as high as 162.28 % (σ = 70 kPa, 6 %/minute strain rate). For 0.2 % PP and 3 %/minute
strain rate, as it may be seen from Table 4 (c), with a two-fold increase in cell pressure from 70 to
140 kPa, the percentage rise of stress was also almost doubled i.e. from 40.58 % to 80.72 %. Table 4
(d) reveals that with 0.3 % PP and 1 %/minute rate of strain, for a three-fold rise in σ (70 to 210
kPa) the corresponding percentage increment magnitude of deviator stress enhanced about one-and-
half times (from 31.93 % to 45.07 %). Table 4 (e) shows that with 0.4 % PP, the peak percentage
increase in stress (64.37 %) occurred for 6 %/minute strain rate and σ = 210 kPa.
Table 4 (a) Percentage increase (for soil without reinforcement) in deviator stress (with reference to
0.5%/minute strain rate)
No PP
Strain rate
(%/minute)
Cell pressure (kPa)
Deviator stress
(kPa)
Increase (%) in
deviator stress as
compared to 0.5 %/
minute strain rate
(corresponding to
same cell pressure)
0.5 70 84.98 –
140 111.91 –
210 212.18 –
1 70 166.63 96.08
140 190.11 69.88
210 245.84 15.86
3 70 162.38 91.08
140 246.06 119.87
210 256.57 20.92
6 70 163.24 92.09
140 202.34 80.81
210 232.60 9.62
Table 4 (b) Percentage increase (for soil with 0.1 % reinforcement) in deviator stress (with
reference to 0.5%/minute strain rate)
0.1 % PP
Strain rate
(%/minute)
Cell pressure (kPa)
Deviator stress
(kPa)
Increase (%) in
deviator stress as
compared to 0.5 %/
minute strain rate
(corresponding to
same cell pressure)
3
3
3
3
3
3

0.5 70 95.67 –
140 126.58 –
210 156.04 –
1 70 136.13 42.29
140 144.20 13.92
210 166.52 6.72
3 70 142.81 49.27
140 163.77 29.38
210 196.48 25.92
6 70 250.92 162.28
140 261.85 106.87
210 312.46 100.24
Table 4 (c) Percentage increase (for soil with 0.2 % reinforcement) in deviator stress (with reference
to 0.5%/minute strain rate)
0.2 % PP
Strain rate
(%/minute)
Cell pressure (kPa)
Deviator stress
(kPa)
Increase (%) in
deviator stress as
compared to 0.5 %/
minute strain rate
(corresponding to
same cell pressure)
0.5 70 135.21 –
140 162.07 –
210 259.17 –
1 70 187.97 39.02
140 221.62 36.74
210 305.24 17.78
3 70 190.08 40.58
140 292.89 80.72
210 329.60 27.18
6 70 247.22 82.84
140 356.11 119.73
210 388.87 50.04
Table 4 (d) Percentage increase (for soil with 0.3 % reinforcement) in deviator stress (with
0.3 % PP
Strain rate
(%/minute)
Cell pressure (kPa)
Deviator stress
(kPa)
Increase (%) in
deviator stress as
compared to 0.5 %/
minute strain rate
(corresponding to
same cell pressure)
0.5 70 133.06 –

140 163.24 –
210 175.46 –
1 70 175.54 31.93
140 205.47 25.87
210 254.54 45.07
3 70 187.25 40.73
140 246.03 50.72
210 310.18 76.78
6 70 252.12 89.48
140 289.83 77.55
210 425.75 142.65
Table 4 (e) Percentage increase (for soil with 0.4 % reinforcement) in deviator stress (with
0.4 % PP
Strain rate
(%/minute)
Cell pressure (kPa)
Deviator stress
(kPa)
Increase (%) in
deviator stress as
compared to 0.5 %/
minute strain rate
(corresponding to
same cell pressure)
0.5 70 124.23 –
140 172.53 –
210 175.54 –
1 70 158.72 27.76
140 190.90 10.65
210 227.65 29.69
3 70 158.94 27.94
140 201.76 16.94
210 255.96 45.81
6 70 170.52 37.26
140 223.43 29.50
210 288.54 64.37
Effect of Strain Rate and Reinforcement on Cohesion
Figure 3 shows variation of cohesion with polypropylene contents at different strain rates. For
unreinforced soil, in the present study the cohesion corresponding to 0.5 %/minute was much lower
as compared to the value of the same for increased strain rates. This was associated with low value
of deviator stress for 0.5 %/minute. Indeed, there may be a threshold value of rate of strain up to
which the deviator stress / cohesion is considerably low. Further investigations are needed to throw
more light on it. For unreinforced soil, corresponding to increase in strain rate from 1 to 3 %/minute,
the cohesion remained almost same; and on increasing the rate from 3 to 6 %/minute the
corresponding increase in cohesion was about 10 %. It could also be seen from Figure 3 that for
strain rates of 0.5, 3, and 6 %/minute the value of cohesion initially increased and later reduced with
increase in polymer content. It may be opined that there was an optimum value of fiber content
corresponding to the maximum magnitude of cohesion, beyond which the cohesion reduced with
increase in fiber proportion. The possible reasoning for above was that with greater fiber content, the

mass of soil matrix became less than sufficient to develop a proper bond between soil and polymer
causing inferior mixing and balling of fiber. Corresponding to strain rate of 1 %/minute the cohesion
intercept varied with fiber content like a saw blade. Probably, the same might have happened due to
uneven distribution of fibers when tests were done with higher quantity of reinforcing polymer.
Fig. 3 Variation in cohesion with PP content
Effect of Strain Rate and Reinforcement on Angle of Internal Friction
The variation of angle of internal friction did not show any particular pattern (Figure 4). At strain rate
of 1 %/minute it showed a zig-zag type variation which was similar to the behavior asobserved by
Zaimoglu and Yetimoglu [12] for the same strain rate. The highest and lowest values of angle of
internal friction were 18° (corresponding to 0.4 % fiber content, 6 %/minute strain rate) and 6.5°
(corresponding to 0.1 % fiber content, 1 %/minute strain rate) respectively. Further investigation is
recommended to understand the nature of variation of the friction angle.
Fig. 4 Variation in angle of internal friction with PP content
Conclusions
In the present study extensive laboratory experiments were conducted with unreinforced and discrete
polypropylene fiber reinforced ML [26] soil under varying strain rates. It was observed that at higher
strain rate, for unreinforced soil, due to the disintegration of inter particle bond strength reduced.
But, in the case of reinforced soil, the addition of fiber vanquished the effect of above breakage of
particle bonding; and the failure deviator stress increased with rise in strain rate. This happened due
to build up of greater pore pressure in slow test. For 0.5, 3, and 6 %/minute strain rates, with
increase in polymer content initially the cohesion increased then decreased. But for 1 %/minute rate
of strain the value of cohesion showed a zig-zag variations. A limitation of this study was that only
one length (5 mm) had been considered for reinforcing the soil. It may be mentioned here that no
literature could be found reporting the behavior of polymer reinforced soil at different strain rates,
and due to lack of literature the responses observed in the present investigation could not be verified.
But, the present findings would serve as a benchmark for future studies.

References

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reinforced sand fills overlying soft clay. Geotextiles and Geomembranes 23 (2):174 – 183
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compression test on cohesive soils. ASTM, United States
Author:
Siddhartha Sengupta, Associate Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Birla Institute of
Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, Pin – 835215, India
Sumit Sengar, Former Postgraduate student, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Birla Institute of
Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, Pin – 835215,India

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