Soil reinforcement and slope stabilisation using recycled waste plastic sheets

ABSTRACT

The generation of the disposal and recycling of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) has been significantly grown in recent years. The amount of landfill available to contain this material has been decreasing, and there is an urgent need to find appropriate disposal locations for these solid wastes. Using of PET in the sheeted form to improve strength parameters of sand soil offers a viable solution. Therefore, this study was designed to bridge this gap by performing Laboratory triaxial compression on unreinforced and reinforced samples. To accomplish this objective, a series of cylindrical specimens were prepared and subjected to triaxial tests according to the ASTM D 4546–03 standard. The trend analysis of laboratory data underscored the influence of the plastic sheets on the strength properties, friction angle, and cohesion of sandy soils. Additionally, several numerical simulations using finite element software program ABAQUS were conducted to model a reinforced slope with plastic sheets. The numerical analysis revealed that using the plastic sheets into the sandy soil enhances the factor of safety of the slope and improve the stability of the slope due to the high tensile strength of the plastic sheets.

KEYWORDS:

• Triaxial test
• soil reinforcement
• polyethylene terephthalate (PET)
• slope stabilisation
• recycling
• FEM

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the K.N. Toosi University of Technology, Teharn, Iran.