Abstract:

The paper deals with a laboratory study of soil shear strength improvement with polyester fibres. Soils CS and CH were mixed with polyester fibres of 70mm length as random reinforcement in an amount of 0.5% and 1.0%. Improvement of the soil shear strength was measured by direct shear tests with a shear box of 0.3 × 0.3 × 0.08 m size. Results show that the improvement rate is different for CS and CH. For soil CS, polyester fibres increased the angle of the internal friction (even by 45.2% with 1% of polyester fibres), as well as the cohesion (by 48.2% with 0.5% of polyester fibres), but also decreased it (by 27.5% with 1% of polyester fibres). For soil CH, fibres decreased the angle of internal friction (by 7.8%) but increased the cohesion by 322.7%. Analysis of the specimen number and result uncertainty shows that various combinations of the 3 specimens provide different results; hence tests with at least 4 specimens are recommended.