Behavior of Soils Strengthened By Plastic Waste Materials

Abstract

The amount of wastes has increased year by year and the disposal becomes a serious problem. Particularly, recycling ratio of the plastic wastes in life and industry is low and many of them have been reclaimed for the reason of unsuitable ones for incineration. It is necessary to utilize the wastes effectively with technical development in each field. This study presents a simple way of recycling plastic waste in the field of civil engineering as reinforcing material. Reinforced soil construction is an efficient and reliable technique for improving the strength and stability of soils. The technique is used in a variety of applications, ranging from retaining structures and embankments to subgrade stabilization beneath footings and pavements. This paper describes an experimental study on mixing plastic waste pieces with two types of soil (clayey soil and sandy soil) at different mixing ratios (0,2,4,6,8 )% by weight respectively. For the two types of soils, the shear strength parameters (cohesion value and angle of internal friction) of reinforced and unreinforced samples were investigated by the direct shear test. In addition, a series of compaction tests were performed on clayey soil mixed with different percentages of waste pieces.