Conventional investigations on the behavior of reinforced and unreinforced soils are often investigated at the failure point. In this paper, a new concept of comparison of the behavior of reinforced and unreinforced soil by estimating the strength and strength ratio (deviatoric stress of reinforced sample to unreinforced sample) at various strain levels is proposed. A comprehensive set of laboratory triaxial compression tests was carried out on wet (natural water content) non-plastic beach silty sand with and without geotextile. The layer configurations used are one, two, three and four horizontal reinforcing layers in a triaxial test sample. The influences of the number of geotextile layers and confining pressure at 3%, 6%, 9%, 12% and 15% of the imposed strain levels on sample were studied and described. The results show that the trend and magnitude of strength ratio is different for various strain level. It implies that using failure strength from peak point or strength corresponding to the axial-strain approximately 15% to evaluate the enhancement of strength or strength ratio due to reinforcement may cause hazard and uncertainty in practical design. Hence, it is necessary to consider the strength of reinforced sample compared with unreinforced sample at the imposed strain level. Only one type of soil and one type of geotextile were used in all tests.

Keywords: Triaxial test, soil reinforcements, geotextile, wet soil, strength, imposed strain

Full-Text [PDF 895 kb]   (4265 Downloads)