Mechanical properties of glass fibre reinforced soil and its application as subgrade reinforcement

Abstract

The study examined the use of two different types of glass fibres – Alkali Resistant (AR) Glass Fibre and Electronic Grade (E) Glass Fibre as reinforcement in soils to improve its strength. Glass fibre reinforcement causes a marginal change in the plastic nature and compaction behaviour of the reinforced soil. Also, the addition of fibres renders the soil less sensitive to moisture changes. Fibre inclusion promotes ductile behaviour of reinforced soil. Unreinforced soil fails with distinct shear plane while reinforced soil shows multi-shear failure and bulging with a network of minor cracks bridged with fibres. The results of this study show that random inclusion of fibres improve the unconfined compressive strength of the reinforced soil and it’s energy absorption capacity. The optimum glass fibre content is observed to be 0.75% for both AR glass fibre and E glass fibre. AR glass fibre performs better than E glass fibre for all proportions of fibre inclusion investigated.

KEYWORDS:

• AR glass fibre
• E glass fibre
• compaction characteristics
• unconfined compressive strength
• energy absorption capacity
• CBR

Acknowledgement

The authors acknowledge the Vice Chancellor, SASTRA Deemed University, Thanjavur, India for providing the facilities to carry out this work and the encouragement in completing this work. We also thank the Editor and the Reviewers for the critical review of the manuscript and constructive suggestions.