Liquefaction potential of reinforced sand with plastic wastes

Affected by the developed pore water pressure during undrained cyclic shear of saturated soils, granular soil liquefaction is regarded as a common phenomenon that occurs under earthquake loads. This phenomenon causes huge damage to infrastructure. Different reinforcement materials have been successfully implemented with particular attention to the use of waste materials to satisfy design specifications and mitigate the adverse environmental effects. This paper aims to investigate the possibility of using waste plastic fibers as reinforcement materials to mitigate liquefaction potential and pore pressure generation of reinforced sand under cyclic loading. For this purpose, 42 stress-controlled cyclic triaxial tests were conducted on Babolsar sand, reinforced by Poly-Ethylene Terephthalate (PET) and Polypropylene (PP) fibers with the fiber contents of 0.25%, 0.5%, and 1% under the confining pressures of 50, 100, and 200 kPa at Cyclic Stress Ratios (CSR) of 0.2 and 0.35. The obtained results revealed that the addition of these waste plastic fibers could significantly increase the liquefaction resistance of Babolsar sand and that with an increase in the waste content, the number of cycles leading to liquefaction would increase. Addition of wastes decreased the pore water pressure generation, and this effect was more pronounced with an increase in the waste content. (c) 2022 Sharif University of Technology. All rights reserved.