TITLE:
Soil Stabilization Using Waste Plastic Materials
AUTHORS:
Rebecca Belay Kassa, Tenaw Workie, Alyu Abdela, Mikiyas Fekade, Mubarek Saleh, Yonas Dejene
KEYWORDS:
Expansive Soil, Clay Soil, Plastic Strips, Soil Stabilization
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Civil Engineering,
Vol.10 No.1,
March
20,
2020
ABSTRACT: Expansive clay soils are the types of soils whose
volume changes with the change in water content. They have a behavior of
swelling and shrinking that is a serious hazard to structures built over them.
Expansive soils are abundantly existing soil types in Ethiopia, particularly
Addis Ababa. This paper shows the outcomes of an attempt to reinforce and
stabilize expansive clay soil with plastic bottle strips. The plastic strips
were prepared and added at three different mixing ratios (0.5%, 1% and 2%) by
weight and in three different aspect ratios (5 mm × 7.5 mm, 10 mm × 15 mm, 15 mm
× 20 mm). The experimental results showed that there was a significant
improvement in shear strength parameters. The swelling and desiccation cracking
behavior of the soil were also expressively reduced. There was a substantial
reduction in the optimum moisture content and slight increment in maximum dry
density. The optimum plastic size (aspect ratio) and plastic content that
results in optimum result can be selected based on the importance of the
selection parameter for a specified engineering work. Stabilizing expansive
clay soils with waste plastic bottles simultaneously solves the challenges of
improper plastic waste recycling that is currently a teething problem in most
developing countries. The results obtained from this study favorably suggest
that inclusion of this material in expansive soils would be effective for
ground improvement in geotechnical engineering.