PSI - Issue 70

Md Azhar et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 70 (2025) 199–206

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1. Introduction The population is growing at an exponential rate, resulting in a scarcity of suitable land for construction. Ground improvement measures, such as soil fortification, can enhance the characteristics of loose and weak soil. Reinforced soil refers to a mass of soil that has been strengthened by adding an external material to the natural soil (Pratap et al., 2022). Various material and ground improvement strategies have been developed to enhance soil qualities, and one of these techniques involves incorporating reinforcement. The purpose of the reinforcement is to improve the tensile and shear strength of the soil, which is typically strong in terms of compressive strength. The primary goal of soil reinforcement is to improve its shear strength, which leads to a higher bearing capacity and reduced settlement and lateral deformation. Soil can be improved either by introducing a continuous reinforcement in a specific orientation within the soil mass or by blending random discontinuous fibers with the soil. Nowadays, several options are available for improving the durability and stiffness of weak soil as well as enhancing its performance under varying loads and environmental conditions. The use of geotextiles for soil reinforcement has gained popularity in the last two decades. Stabilizing soil with geotextiles is an inexpensive and eco-friendly solution to improve both stability and ground quality. Reinforcement and soil together can be treated as a composite material for analyzing the behavior of reinforced soil. Many researchers have taken up investigating the feasibility of using geotextile as a reinforcement for sand samples tested on a triaxial compression apparatus (Latha and Murthy, 2007; Nguyen et al., 2013; Wu and Hong, 2008) along with the direct shear testing (Abu-Farsakh et al., 2007). Further, Nguyen et al. (2013) carried out many laboratory triaxial tests to characterize the properties of sand samples reinforced by nonwoven geotextile and to evaluate the amount of strain developed due to that reinforcement. Some of the tests were also geared toward the improvement of shear strength of sand in triaxial compression with the incorporation of tire chips (Bałachowski and Gotteland, 2007; Ghaffari, 2021). Following, Lal et al. (2019) did several triaxial tests on saturated sand for enhancement of its strength and stiffness characteristics, and they recorded a decrease in the dilative behavior of sand with the increasing percentage of various coir fiber products. Reinforcement in clay soil was assessed through sand layers placed on either sides of the reinforcing material (Abdi et al., 2009; Unnikrishnan et al., 2002). The introduction of a thin sand layer will help in effective pore water distribution along the frictional interface between clay and reinforcing material. Hence, past studies have stated that reinforced sand behavior is affected by parameters like size of specimen, confining pressure, type of reinforcing material, and spacing of reinforcement. Generally, the ultimate aim of reinforcement is, in fact, to improve the shear strength and maximum axial strain at the failure of the specimen. Moreover, the research is also analyzed the stress-strain behavior of sand reinforced with geotextiles and checkd the behavior varies with the inclusion of various layers of geotextiles. Furthermore, the research aims to define the failure envelope for both unreinforced and reinforced sand. 2. Materials and Methodology 2.1. Sand In this study, sand has been used to anylyse the strength characteristics with the help of reinforcement with jute geotextile. The sand used for the investigation was obtained from the local market and subsequently filtered in the laboratory in accordance with Indian regulations. The soil is found to consist of 97.92% fine sand and is classified as poorly graded. Fig 1 displays the distribution of grain sizes in the soil. While Table 1 present the physical characteristics of sand as per Indian standard.