Studies on the Effects of Addition of Shredded Plastic Waste as Reinforcement on Engineering Properties of Black-Cotton Soil

Abstract

Plastic waste is non-biodegradable and its disposal problem has become very critical issue nowadays. Black-cotton soil has been proved one of the problematic soil which requires improvement for its swelling and other characteristics. Therefore, this plastic waste has been attempted to be reused for improving the performance of this soil’s engineering properties. For this, plastic waste was collected and shredded into strips of different aspect ratio of (5 mm × 10 mm, 5 mm × 20 mm, 3 mm × 10 mm, 3 mm × 20 mm). To decide the optimum aspect ratio, several tests were carried out by pilot study than for optimum aspect ratio, optimum amount of dosage was found out after adding 0.05–0.3% in the increment of 0.05% of the weight of soil sample. The results of the tests performed on black-cotton soil revealed that the optimum aspect ratio and economical dose for unconfined compression strength test were 5 mm × 20 mm and 0.1% of the weight of the soil sample. For California bearing ratio test, optimum dose of the fiber was found to be 5 mm × 20 mm and 0.1% of weight of soil sample collected, However, for free swelling test the results were varying and it was due to orientation of the flacks and was difficult to generalize the dose and percentage swelling control.