EFFECT OF GEOTEXTILE REINFORCEMENT ON SHEAR STRENGTH OF SANDY SOIL: LABORATORY STUDY

This paper presents results of a series of undrained monotonic compression tests on loose sand reinforced with geotextile mainly to study the effect of confining stress on the mechanical behaviour of geotextile reinforced sand. The triaxial tests were performed on reconstituted specimens of dry natural sand prepared at loose relative density (Dr = 30%) with and without geotextile layers and consolidated to three levels of confining pressures 50, 100 and 200 kPa, where different numbers and different arrangements of reinforcement layers were placed at different heights of the specimens (0, 1 and 2 layers). The behaviour of test specimens was presented and discussed. Test results showed that geotextile inclusion improves the mechanical behaviour of sand, a significant increase in the shear strength and cohesion value is obtained by adding up layers of reinforcement. Also, the results indicate that the strength ratio is more pronounced for samples which were subjected to low value of confining pressure. The obtained results reveal that high value of confining pressure can restrict the sand shear dilatancy and the more effect of reinforcement efficiently.