ROLE OF NANO SILICA AND POLYPROPYLENE FIBER IN AMENDING THE EARLY STRENGTH DEVELOPMENT OF A EXPANSIVE SOIL

Recently, the use of plastic products,such as. polyethylene (PE) bottles and polypropylene (PP), has. been significantly increased, which may lead to many environmental issues. Therefore, it is important to find methods to manage these waste materials without causing any ecological hazards. One of these methods is to use plastic wastes as soil stabiliser materials. In this study, Polypropylene Fiber (PP) has been used in the form of fibres. The effect of the stabilisation was evaluated through carrying out standard laboratory tests. These tests have been conducted on natural and stabilised soils with four fibre contents (0.5%, 0.8%, 1.1%, and 1.4 %.) of the soil weight. The tests included the standard compaction test, unconfined compressive strength (UCS) test, California Bearing Ratio (CBR) test. The main motive of this research is to investigate the optimal combination of Nano-Silica and Polypropylene Fiber with clay soil. The engineering properties such as liquid limit, plastic limit, maximum dry density and unconfined compressive Strength (UCS) are analyzed with virgin soil, the soil with Nano-Silica and combination of soil with Nano-Silica and polypropylene fiber. Four different combinations of Nano-Silica at different percentages 2%, 4%, 6% and 8% are used in integration with Polypropylene Fiber is used in different percentages such as, 0.5%, 0.8%, 1.1%, and 1.4%. From these experiments, it has been analyzed that with the increase of Polypropylene Fiber content in addition to Nano-Silica, the UCS increases and maximum value of UCS is obtained at 7% of Nano-Silica with 0.7% of Polypropylene Fiber.