EFFECT OF GLASS FIBERS ON RED SOIL

Abstract

Soil reinforcement has been introduced into the field of geotechnical engineering for many years in order to improve the properties of ground soil in specific engineering projects. Traditional geosynthetics such as geotextile, geogrid etc. have been proved to be efficient, and they are being increasingly used in geotechnical engineering but the use of glass fibres in soil have only started recently. Though some research have been done with a few types of soil, still the volume of study is rather scanty compared to other soil reinforcing materials. Moreover, the effect of randomly distributed glass fibers acting as reinforcement material seems to be an interesting concept due to the absence of potential planes of weakness that can develop parallel to oriented reinforcement. Considering these, a series of tests were performed with red loam soil with glass fibre as reinforcement at various percentage content to find out its effects on the soil and to find whether the particular soil – reinforcement combination is useful.