Shear behavior of geotextile-reinforced Chlef sand in the Mediterranean region: Laboratory investigation

Abstract

An experimental study about the effects of initial conditions of soil and geotextile reinforcement on the mechanical behavior of reinforced sand is presented in this paper. A series of direct shear tests are conducted on reconstituted specimens of dry and moist natural sand prepared with different initial water content (w?=?0, 1.5, 3, and 5%) and including the two arrangements of geotextile layers (one and two layers, respectively). Both S41 and PEC55types of non-woven geotextile were used and placed at different heights of the specimens to investigate the effect of geotextile reinforcement on the behavior of sand. Test specimens were prepared at Dr =80% of relative density and were subjected to three different normal stresses of 100, 200, and 300?kPa. The experimental results showed that the deposition mode (wet and dry) and the geotextile reinforcement have significant effects on the behavior of reinforced sand. The increase in shear strength is relatively more significant for specimens prepared with dry deposition mode as compared to those prepared with wet deposition mode and it increases with the number of geotextile layers, this effect becomes less significant for wet specimens. The experimental results also demonstrated that (PEC55) non-woven geotextile shows a better performance than the (S41) of geotextile. These results can be explained by the effective tensile strength property of polyester yarns of the (PEC55) non-woven geotextile that it has led to a significant increase in the shear strength.