Study on effect of cornsilk fiber in cemented soil stabilization

Abstract

Fiber-cement stabilized soil is one of many methods for strengthening soil. However, the kind of fiber material used in this method plays an important role. So far, many researchers have studied on many kinds of fiber to stabilize soil such as rice straw, rice husk, pineapple leaf, banana leaf, etc. These fiber materials are abundant, cheap and easy to obtain from the agricultural field because most of them are discarded. Furthermore, the traditional way to dispose of agriculture waste is burning causing some environmental pollution problems. Therefore, the utilization and direct use of waste materials are of much benefit to environment and economy. Nowadays, corn is the third most cultivated crop in the world, so the by-product from corn such as cornsilk is redundant and easy to collect from the field. Hence, the present work aims to study the effect of new waste fiber material as raw cornsilk fiber in strengthening soil. This study uses the unconfined compressive test to evaluate the strength and strain of cemented soil and fiber-cemented soil. Soil used in this study is artificial soil, which is made of clay and silt with the ratio of 2:3, respectively. Cemented soil admixtures are made with cement contents of 30, 35, 40 kg/m3. The effect of fiber content is studied in this study by changing the fiber content added to cemented soil admixtures at different levels of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 kg/m3. The results of this study show that it is possible to utilize of cornsilk as fiber material in cemented soil stabilization.