AN INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECT OF GEOPOLYMER COATED GEOTEXTILES ON THE BEHAVIOR OF WEAK SOILS UNDER LOADS

Abstract

Developing technology diversifies and improves the applications of geotechnical engineering as well as all other engineering fields. In the context of this study, an experimental program was conducted to investigate the effect of geotextile, which has been used in remediation works for a long time, and the recently increasingly popular geopolymer coated geotextile elements on the behavior of cohesionless and cohesive soil underloads. Firstly, the optimum geotextile embedment depth for cohesionless and cohesive soil was investigated. Then, geotextile elements coated with geopolymers with different mixture ratios were placed at the optimum depth and were subjected to load with vertical loading tests. Load-displacement curves of the experiments were generated; failure load values were obtained and compared. When the results of experimental studies were evaluated, it was observed that uncoated geotextile and coated geotextile components improved the behavior of both cohesive and non-cohesive weak soil underloads. The obtained increases reached up to 279% compared to the weak soils, however, amounts of increase were variable for both soils. It was predicted that the results obtained from the study can provide inspiration and guidance for the further usage of geopolymer coating applications in field and literature studies.

Keywords

• Coated geotextile
• Cohesionless soil
• Cohesive soil
• Geotextile
• Soil stabilization.

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