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Shaking Table Study on PET Strips-Sand Mixtures Using Laminar Box Modelling

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Abstract

Daily increase in plastic waste amounts is a serious environmental problem and it is among the major challenges worldwide. Reusing this waste material can be therefore an appropriate solution to overcome this problem. Besides, recycling plastic waste as reinforcing material has become a cheap and viable alternative for soil improvement schemes. In the current study, PET plastic waste strips (water bottles) were randomly mixed with sandy soil to improve the soil strength parameters. Due to the lack of comprehensive seismic studies on soils reinforced with PET strips, a series of 1-g shaking table tests was performed to evaluate the dynamic properties of the sand-PET mixtures with different PET contents (0%, 0.5%, 0.75% and 1% by the sand weight) and aspect ratios (1 and 5). Effect of various parameters, including excitation amplitude, PET strip content and PET strip aspect ratio on response of the mixtures were elaborated. It was found that addition of the PET strips to the sand, could reduce the soil brittleness under low overburden pressures. Therefore, at the inclusion ranges used in this study, increase of the PET strips content or aspect ratio, caused an increase in the damping ratio and decrease in the shear modulus values compared to the plain sand model. Opposite trends of PET strips inclusion contribution were reported under the influence of high overburden pressures through carrying out some cyclic large-scale direct shear tests.

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Abbreviations

\(A_{loop}\) :

Total loop area in the hysteresis loop

\(A_{triangle}\) :

Area of the triangle in the hysteresis loop

A R :

Aspect ratio

C c :

Coefficient of curvature

C u :

Coefficient of uniformity

D :

Damping ratio

D 10 :

Diameter of particles at 10% finer

D 50 :

Mean diameter of the particles

D r :

Target relative density

G :

Shear modulus

G s :

Specific gravity

\(\tau_{max}\) :

Maximum shear stress

\(\tau_{min }\) :

Minimum shear stress

\(\gamma_{d}\) :

Dry unit weight

\(\gamma_{{d_{max} }}\) :

Maximum dry unit weight

\(\gamma_{{d_{min} }}\) :

Minimum dry unit weight

W elastic :

Elastic work

W PET :

Dry weight of the PET strips

W Sand :

Dry weight of the sand

Z :

Depth

∆W :

Net work

∆Z :

Spacing interval

∆τ :

Total shear stress variation

∆ γ :

Total shear strain variation

τ :

Shear stress

γ :

Shear strain

γ max :

Maximum shear strain

γ min :

Minimum shear strain

\(\rho\) :

Density

η :

Weight fraction of PET

\(\ddot{u}\) :

Horizontal acceleration

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge University of Guilan with thanks for the access to its laboratory equipment. The authors also would like to thank the reviewers and the editor for their valuable suggestions to improve the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch, Isfahan, Iran

    Hamed Fathi & Mahmood Vafaeian

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Guilan, P.O. 3756, Rasht, Gilan, Iran

    Reza Jamshidi Chenari

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  1. Hamed Fathi
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  2. Reza Jamshidi Chenari
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  3. Mahmood Vafaeian
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Correspondence to Reza Jamshidi Chenari.

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Fathi, H., Jamshidi Chenari, R. & Vafaeian, M. Shaking Table Study on PET Strips-Sand Mixtures Using Laminar Box Modelling. Geotech Geol Eng 38, 683–694 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10706-019-01057-y

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