Investigation on the effect of carpet fiber inclusion on hydraulic conductivity of clean sand using laboratory and random finite element analyses

Soil reinforced with fiber shows characteristics of a composite material, in which fiber inclusion has a significant effect on soil permeability. concerning to the higher void ratio of carpet fibers, at first stages it may be expected that an increase in fiber content of the reinforced soil would result in an increase in permeability of the mixture. however, the present article demonstrates that fiber inclusion will decrease the permeability of sand-fiber composite.a series of constant head permeability tests have been carried out to show the effects and consequently, a new system of phase relationships was introduced to calculate the dry mass for the sand portion of the composite. monte carlo simulation technique adopted with finite element theory was employed to back calculate the hydraulic conductivity of individual porous fibers from the laboratory test results. it was observed that the permeability coefficient of the porous fibers are orders of magnitude less than the skeletal sand portion due to the fine sand particle entrapment and also the fiber volume change characteristics.