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Key words: Soil Reinforcement; Cohesion; OMC; MDD; CBR; Fibre Reinforced; Soil Stabilization; Aspect
Ratio.
I – INTRODUCTION
Disintegration of physical and chemical agents leads to the formation of soil. It is formed when rocks,
minerals like granite marble sandstone, organic matter both animated and in animated, water and air combine
with each other. Soil is by and large falsified due to weathering action of wind, rain, snow, sun which lead to the
disintegration of rocks. Humus also leads to the soil formation on combining with rock. Reactions mixed up in
chemical process are corrosion, hydration, carbonation and oozing by natural acids and water. Nature of soil can
be identified by combination of humus and the size of the grains of rock. The grains may be very small and
even, clay is the best example or they may be larger, like grains of sand or may be gravel. Soil is considered to
be the important part of environment because it is the place where plants and animals survive and grow. Beside
this maximum of rainwater also makes its passage through soil and hence purity of water is maintained by soil.
As far as civil engineering is concerned soil is the earliest and used building material. It is also the material
which has been used at great numbers. Soil has been classified on numerous bases. The main being residual soil,
transported soil, organic soils and volcanic soils. However type of soil can also vary with climate. Mainly for
engineering structures residual soil is used further classified as black cotton soil and literate soil. Clayey soils
Pine Needles
It is necessary to mention that natural fibers have been used for a long time in many developing
countries in cement composites and earth blocks because of their availability and low cost. At this point, some
natural fibers and their features in soil projects are briefly described:
A comprehensive literature review shows that using natural and/or synthetic fibers in geotechnical
engineering is feasible in six fields including pavement layers (road construction), retaining walls, and railway
embankments, protection of slopes, earthquake and soil-foundation engineering. A brief discussion about some
cases is presented in the following.
• Pavement layers
In 1991, the US ARMY Corps of Engineers demonstrated the improved performance of untreated and
chemically stabilized soil layers by using GEOFIBERS_ soil reinforcement in pavement engineering. The 30
cm fiber-reinforced silty sand section provided a 33% increase in the number of traffic passes versus the similar
un-reinforced section. Grogan and Johnson showed that the inclusion of Geofiber allowed up to 90% more
traffic passes until failure in the clay, 60% passes until failure in the modified sand, and some enhanced traffic
performance was reported for the silty sand. It is necessary to mention that PP Geofibers can be mixed with
subgrade soils. Their inclusion raises the maximum density about 5% and reduces the optimum moisture content
of the compacted soil mixture about 5% as well. Tingle et al. concluded from full-scale field tests that fiber-
stabilized sands were a viable alternative to traditional road construction materials for temporary or low-volume
roads. They used a field mixing procedure more or less similar to that of Santoni and Webster. There is an
available report (2008) stating that aprons, taxiways, and a helipad have been stabilized by using high-early
strength Portland cement and PP fibers with screened native soil at the Bradshaw Field Training Area in the
Northern Territory, Australia. Finally, the most important findings of some research works are that the use of
synthetic and/or natural fibers in road construction can significantly increase pavement resistance to rutting, as
compared to the resistance of non-stabilized pavement over a weak subgrade.
• Retaining walls and railway embankments
Park and Tan showed that use of PP fibers of 60 mm reinforced silty-sand-soil-wall increases the stability of the
wall and decreases the earth pressures and displacements of the wall. They also reported that this effect is more
significant when short fiber soil is used in combination with geogrid.
Another concept of using fibers in civil engineering is the construction of foundations in soils with poor
bearing capacities, where the costs of a deep foundation solution can be incompatible with the overall costs for
low-budget building projects. In these cases, alternatives for the improvement of local soil through the addition
of cementitious agents or through the inclusion of oriented or randomly distributed discrete elements such as
fibers might be used.
The following executive problems are involved with using fibers in soil reinforcement:
• Lack of scientific standard
In spite of the quantity of research conducted into the resultant characteristics of using fiber and shavings for
soil improvement, there are still no scientific standard or techniques specialized for real field projects.
• Clumping and balling of fibers
Further, each of these three factors is affected by dimensional changes of the natural fiber which can occur
due to changes in moisture and temperature. Such changes in fiber dimension can occur during the curing stage
of the soil–fiber composite material and this then determines a possible mechanism resulting in a poor
interfacial bond. During the mixing and drying stages of production, the hydrophilic nature of the natural fibers
can lead it to absorb water and effectively push out on the soil matrix. Then near the end of the curing (drying)
period, the fiber loses the water that has absorbed, causing it to shrink back. Because the matrix is now set, a
void is formed around the periphery of the fiber and a weakened interfacial bond can result illustrates this
mechanism. Therefore, in looking for an additive to improve the bonding characteristics of fiber soil
composites, it is required that the treatment reduces the transfer of water between the matrix and the fiber.
Possible additives identified from the literature include water resistant coatings such as asphalt emulsion, rosin–
alcohol mixture, paints, bituminous material, a water soluble acrylic, a polystyrene coating and acrylonitrile
butadiene styrene (ABS). Khazanchi et al. with their study of wall panels consisting of soil, 2.5% cement and
polystyrene coated wheat straw, reported fiber bond strength of 1.3 MPa. With the same material but using
bitumen and acrylic coatings, they also achieved bond strengths of 0.1–0.12 and 0.08–0.125 MPa, respectively.
In this study untreated fibers gave bond strengths in the range of 0.07–0.08 MPa.
IV - OBJECTIVES
Use of natural fibre in civil engineering for improving soil properties is beneficial because they are
cheap, locally available, biodegradable and eco-friendly material. The natural fibre reinforcement causes
significant improvement in tensile strength, shear strength, and other engineering properties of the soil. Among
various natural fibres, pine needles are one of such natural fibres, being used as reinforcing material in soil
stabilization. Fibres especially those obtained from renewable resources such as natural fibre have attracted an
increasing attention during the last decade due to environmental concerns. These natural fibres are considered as
the most suitable alternative to synthetic fibre for use in various fields.
The project will study the effect of Pine needles stabilization on strength behavior of clayey soil. Pine needles
collected from locally available forest (Rajouri, J&K) chopped into 10 to 15mm length has been added
randomly in clayey soil at different percentages (i.e. 0.5%, 1% 1.5%) by dry weight of soil. Soil samples
randomly mixed with Pine needles were prepared at maximum dry density (MDD) and optimum moisture
contents (OMC) and subjected to (California bearing ratio) CBR tests, unconfined compression tests and
compaction proctor tests.
V. CONCLUSION
On the basis of analysis and interpretation of results obtained from the previous experimental investigations
carried out in this work following conclusion are drawn.
2. To overcome the above mentioned difficulty calcium Chloride was added to soil in addition to Pine needles. It
was found that optimum percentage for soil remains stable in relevance to all its compaction properties like dry
density, Void ratio, OMC.
3. The optimum percentage of both pine and calcium chloride at which soil acquires best results was found to be
0.6% and 3% respectively.
4. Addition of pines to the clayey soil it was found that CBR value increases a little bit but not to a great extent.
5. The optimum percentage at which soil acquires maximum CBR was 1.2% by weight of soil after that CBR
decreases. So to increase CBR value Calcium Chloride was added and was noted that significant increase in
CBR value of Soil takes place,
REFERENCES:
1. Maher M. H. and Gray D. H. (1990), “Static Response of Sands Reinforced with Randomly Distributed Fibers”, J.
Geotech. Engg. ASCE, 116(11), 1661- 1677.
2. Manoj Chandran, A.R. Sinha and R.B.S.Rawat (2011), “Replacing Controlled Burning Practice by Alternate
Methods of Reducing Fuel Load in the Himalayan Long Leaf Pine (PinusRoxburghiiSarg) Forests”, 5th
International Wildland Fire Conference, South Africa.
3. McGown A., Andrews K. Z. and Al-Hasani M. M. (1978), “Effect of Inclusion Properties on the Behaviour of
Sand”, Geotechnique, Vol 28(3), 327- 346.
4. Pandey P.K (1996), Litter Nutrient Dynamics in Mixed Old Grown PinusRoxburghii Sargent, Plantation of Doon
Valley, FRI, Dehradun.
5. Vasan R. M., Ranjan G. and Charan H. D. (1995), “Fiber Reinforced Soil: A New Method of Reinforced
SoilSubgrade”, Proc. National Seminar on Emerging Trends in Highway Engineering, Bangalore, 24.1-24.4
6. A simple review of soil reinforcement by using natural and synthetic fibers. Sayyed Mahdi Hejazi, Mohammad
Sheikh zadeh, Sayyed Mahdi Abtahi, Ali Zadhoush.
7. http://saetaequina.com/files/1-s2_0-S0950061811006763-main.pdf