engineering properties of sand reinforced with plastic waste

A series of triaxial compression tests were performed to evaluate the benefits of plastic wastes and investigate the engineering properties of sand reinforced with these materials. in this research, the effects of plastic waste contents (0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, and 1% by dry weight of sand), types of plastic wastes poly-ethylene terephthalate (pet) and poly-propylene (pp) fibers and confining pressures (50, 100 and 200 kpa) on the behavior of babolsar sand were investigated. the values of deformation modulus (up to 84%), peak (up to 7 times of the unreinforced sand) and steady state shear strength increased with reinforcement. also, axial strain at failure for fiber-reinforced sand increased up to 1.5 times of unreinforced one (from 3.36% to 8.53% for 1% pp usage at 50 kpa confining pressure). therefore, it can be generally stated that the use of plastic wastes in the sand leads to low-cost soil reinforcement and also lessens the disposal problem of these kinds of wastes.