Enhancing Strength Properties of Soft Soil Using Carbon Fiber

Abstract

Civil engineers are always ambitious when it comes to new materials that can face many challenges which have cropped up with time in the world. This paper enquires the effectiveness of carbon fiber (CF) as a better reinforcing agent to augment the engineering characteristics of soil, especially the shear strength, unconfined compressive strength (UCS), and California bearing ratio (CBR) using CI-CH soil. Varying percentage of carbon fiber (0.05%. 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.4%, and 0.6% by weight of soil) were included to analyze the gain in relative strength of soil. The research was conducted to assess the shear parameters, unconfined compressive strength (UCS), and California bearing ratio (CBR) of soil with respect to varying percentage of carbon fiber. The analysis revealed that, 0.4% of carbon fiber in the soil mixture resulted in enhancing the strength properties of the soil to the maximum. The soil reinforced with carbon fiber increased cohesion, internal angle of friction, UCS, both soaked and unsoaked CBR by factor 4.1, 1.78, 1.25, 1.56, and 1.52, respectively.