Effect of Geotextile on Shear Strength of Municipal Solid Waste Soil

Abstract

Laboratory tests were carried out on reinforced and unreinforced soil samples to determine the effect of geotextile on shear strength of Municipal solid waste sand. The variation of shear strength was studied by changing the number of layers of geotextile in the soil specimen. Preliminary soil investigation was conducted to determine the index properties of the sample and classify it. After classification it direct shear test were conducted on the silty sand sample and results analyzed. The tests were carried out on unreinforced and reinforced specimens with 1, 2 and 3 evenly spaced geotextile layers under three different confining pressures to find cohesion and friction angle. It was concluded that the peak failure strain increases as the number of layers increases. The stress increase was much greater in three layer reinforcement than one layer. The cohesion value changes greatly as the number of layer increase whereas the friction angle value does not witness a similar mercuric rise. Bulging between layers was observed whenever the sample failed at each geotextile level. The failure envelopes were drawn as the best fit line for the Mohr circles. Keywords: Geotextile, Silty Sand, Cohesion, Friction angle.