Effect of Polypropylene Fiber Reinforcement on the Consolidation, Swell and Shrinkage Behavior of Lime Blended Expansive Soil

In this article, synthetic fibers in the presence of lime stabilization are proposed as an alternative to overcome the issues related to shrink-swell distress in expansive soils. Two types of synthetic fibers, Fiber Cast® (FC) and Fiber Mesh® (FM), were studied by conducting one dimensional fixed ring Oedometer swell-consolidation and bar linear shrinkage tests. Three dosages (0.2, 0.4 and 0.6% percent by weight of soil) and two lengths of the fibers (6 and 12 mm) were evaluated with and without lime treatments. The results indicated that FC fibers had better swell restricting performance in the absence of lime treatment, while in the presence of lime both fibers had similar performance in reducing swelling. Shrinkage tests results showed that irrespective of dosage levels, both the fibers had pronounced effect in reducing the linear shrinkage strains up on lime treatment. Nonlinear best fit equations have been proposed to relate compression index ( C _c ) and recompression index ( C _r ) of expansive clay deposits with and without lime treatment to amount and dosage of FC and FM reinforcements. The proposed nonlinear fit provides a mean for recognizing, more efficiently, the patterns in the experimental data and predicting the compression indices, C _c and C _r reliably.