Parametric study of glass fiber reinforced fine-grained soil with emphasis on microstructural analysis

ABSTRACT A comprehensive experimental programme was undertaken to study the parametric effect on mechanical behaviour of fine-grained soils by inclusion of glass fibres. The behaviour of both unreinforced and reinforced soil specimens under uni-axial compression was systematically investigated corresponding to fibre length, fibre content, soil density, moisture content and loading rate. The unconfined compression strength test (UCS) results confirmed the reliance of UCS improvement index ( ) on the selected parameters. For 18 mm fibre length and 0.9% fibre content, UCS improvement index of 71.68% was observed. The interface morphologies were studied by analysing the failure patterns and microstructural mechanisms through scanning electron microscopy. Artificial neural network (ANN) was used to develop an estimation model of the relationship between soil strength and different reinforcement parameters. This study is expected to help in better understanding of mechanical behaviour of FRS and its subsequent application in the field.