Performance and Analysis of Coir Fibre as Soil Reinforcement

Abstract

The increasing tempo of construction activity has led to the requirement of good soil whose availability is less hence, there is need of improving the soil condition which can be accomplished through ground improvement methods. Among all the ground improvement techniques, soil reinforcement is emerging as an attractive alternative. The addition of natural fibre to the soil is very good soil reinforcement technique. Coir fibre extracted from the outer shell of the coconut can be effectively used to tackle much short term stability issue in geotechnical engineering. In this paper attempt is made to determine an optimum proportion mix suitable for geotechnical application by blending clayey soil with randomly distributed coir fibres. Laboratory model studies were conducted to study the effect of the amount of fibre on the strength of soil. The fibre content used were 0.25%, 0.50%, 0.75% and 1%. It can be revealed from this study that mixing of Coir fibre brings out significant improvement in geotechnical properties of soil. The unconfined compressive strength (UCS), Triaxial Shear Test and the California bearing ratio (CBR) values considerably increased with the optimum use of the coir fibre.