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a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: A series of unconfined compression tests were performed on specimens of fiber-reinforced cemented
Received 5 December 2009 sand (FRCS) to evaluate how fiber inclusion affects the measured strength and ductility characteristics
Received in revised form 15 July 2010 of cemented sand. Lightly cemented sand with three different cement ratios (2, 4, and 6% by weight of
Accepted 18 July 2010
soil) was mixed with four different fiber ratios (0, 0.3, 0.6, and 1% by weight of soil) and then compacted
Available online 14 August 2010
into a cylindrical specimen. Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fiber, which adheres well to cement, was randomly
distributed throughout the cemented sand. The test results indicate that the inclusion of PVA fiber has a
Keywords:
significant effect on both the unconfined compressive strength (UCS) and the axial strain at peak
Fiber-reinforced cemented sand
Ductility
strength. The increase in the UCS was most apparent in the 2% cemented specimen wherein the UCS
Unconfined compressive strength increased more than three times as the fiber ratio increased up to 1%. The ductile behavior of the FRCS
is quantified by the deformability index, D, which is a ratio of the axial strain at peak strength of fiber-
reinforced specimen to that of non-fiber-reinforced specimen. In the cases of 1% fiber ratio, the values
of D were greater than four, regardless of cement ratios.
Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Polypropylene (PP), polyester (PE), and glass fibers have been
commonly used for reinforcing soils because they are readily avail-
Natural or artificial cementation of soil particles contributes to able [16,25,28,30]. Consoli et al. [6] examined the effect of these
settlement reduction and bearing capacity increase [4], which are three fibers on the mechanical behavior of fiber-reinforced cemen-
the two key design considerations in the field of geotechnical engi- ted soils. Their results showed that the inclusion of PP fiber signif-
neering. Owing to such advantages, artificially cemented soils are icantly improved the brittle behavior of cemented soils, whereas
increasingly used in various construction sites. For example, Horiu- the deviatoric stresses at failure slightly decreased. Unlike the case
chi et al. [12] and Kawasaki et al. [15] used cemented fly ash for the of PP fiber, the inclusion of PE and glass fibers slightly increased the
construction of a man-made island, and Kitazume [17] also used deviatoric stresses at failure and slightly reduced the brittleness.
cemented fly ash for back-filling waterfront structures, while Is- Maher and Ho [21] studied the behavior of Kaolinite-fiber (PP
mail [13] used cemented in situ soil for retaining walls. While and glass fibers) composites, and found that the increase in the
the cemented soils markedly increase the elastic modulus and unconfined compressive strength (UCS) was more pronounced in
the peak strength, they exhibit more brittle stress–strain behavior the glass fiber-reinforced specimens. Conversely, Al-Refeai [2] re-
at lower initial mean effective stresses or higher cement contents ported that PP fiber outperformed glass fiber. Maher and Ho [20]
[27]. The brittle failure pattern can cause the sudden failure of soil found that the inclusion of 1% glass fiber to 4% cemented sand re-
structures that are stabilized with cemented materials; hence, the sulted in an increase of 1.5 times in the UCS when compared to
usage of cemented soils may not be permitted. In particular, when non-fiber-reinforced cemented sand. Park [23] found that the addi-
applying cemented soils at a shallow depth, the degree of brittle tion of 1% polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fiber to 4% cemented sand re-
failure may be more pronounced due to a low confining stress. sulted in a two times increase in both the UCS and the axial
To overcome such a brittle nature of cemented soils, either natural strain at peak strength when compared with the non-fiber-rein-
or synthetic fibers have been included in cemented soils forced specimen. The inclusion of PVA fiber seems to produce more
[7,8,14,20]. The addition of fiber to cemented soil produces bond- effective reinforcement in terms of strength and ductility when
ing and friction between the soil and the fibers. A fiber-reinforced compared to other fibers under the same cementation.
cemented soil can sustain a load even after the debonding or fail- The purpose of this paper is to present the results of unconfined
ure of a cemented soil and thus, can effectively improve the brittle compression (UC) tests on cemented sand in which PVA fibers are
behavior of the soil. randomly distributed. The PVA fiber adheres well to cement and
also has strong anti-alkaline characteristics. The effect of the inclu-
* Tel.: +82 53 950 7544; fax: +82 53 950 6564. sion of PVA fiber in cemented sand is evaluated in terms of the UCS
E-mail address: sungpark@knu.ac.kr and the ductility of cemented sand.
0950-0618/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2010.07.017
S.-S. Park / Construction and Building Materials 25 (2011) 1134–1138 1135
1500
Unconfined compressive stress (kPa)
C-0(ρf =0%)
900
600
300
0
0 2 4 6 8 10
Axial strain (%) )
(%
, ρf
Fig. 3. UC results of 6% cemented specimens reinforced with different fiber ratios (C Ceme r ati o
series). nt ratio er
, ρc (% F ib
)
1% fiber ratio. This could be partially attributed to PVA fiber’s adhe- Fig. 4. Correlation among UCS, cement ratio and fiber ratio.
sive properties with regard to cement, which causes more friction
between the fibers and the cemented sand.
The secant elastic modulus, E50, was calculated from one half of
Unconfined compressive strength ratio, R
4.0
the axial strain at peak strength and was then compared against Cement ratio=2%
3.5 Cement ratio=4%
the cement ratio in Fig. 6. The secant elastic modulus depends on
the cement ratio rather than on the fiber ratio. For a given cement 3.0
Cement ratio=6%
ratio, the secant elastic modulus of each specimen, each with a dif-
ferent fiber ratio, falls within a narrow band of values as shown in 2.5
Fig. 6, whereas the axial strain associated with peak strength grad- 2.0
ually increases with increasing fiber ratio as shown in Figs. 1–3.
This kind of increasing stress–strain behavior has been similarly 1.5
observed in the results of triaxial compression tests on cemented
1.0
specimens with increasing confining stress [1,5]. From these exper-
imental results, it can be inferred that in terms of an increase in 0.5
strength, an increase in the fiber ratio in fiber-reinforced cemented
sand has the same effect as an increase in the confining stress in 0.0
0 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2
non-fiber-reinforced cemented sand. The horizontal deformation
Fiber ratio (%)
of fiber-reinforced samples was restrained by the included fibers.
The increase in the confining stress can also restrain the horizontal Fig. 5. Strength increase due to fiber inclusion.
deformation of the samples. This result has been ascertained by
Yang [29] who pointed out that the increase in the maximum prin-
cipal stress at failure in the fiber-reinforced sample was attribut- concept of ductility is introduced herein and used to determine
able to the increase in the confining stress. the performance of fiber-reinforced cemented soils. For structural
materials including FRP (fiber-reinforced polymer), the ductility
measures the ability of a material to sustain inelastic deformation
3.2. Deformation characteristics prior to collapse without a significant loss in the resistance [22].
For example, ductility can be defined as the ratio of the final defor-
As shown in Figs. 1–3, the axial strain at peak strength increases mation or deflection at the ultimate state to that at the yield state.
as the fiber ratio increases. This result indicates that the addition of There are some cases in soil-based inelastic materials, unlike the
PVA fibers delays failure and improves the brittle behavior. The elastic materials mentioned earlier, where no such clear distinction
Table 3
Summary of unconfined compression tests.
Specimens Cement ratio, qc (%) Fiber ratio, qf (%) UCS (kPa) Axial strain at peak strength (%) Strength increase ratio, R Deformability index, D
A-0 2 0 155 1.07 1 1
A-1 0.3 188 1.83 1.2 1.7
A-2 0.6 390 3.21 2.5 3
A-3 1 548 4.29 3.5 4
B-0 4 0 296 1.11 1 1
B-1 0.3 414 2.35 1.4 2.1
B-2 0.6 646 3.17 2.2 2.9
B-3 1 860 4.78 2.9 4.3
C-0 6 0 444 1.10 1 1
C-1 0.3 574 2.13 1.3 1.9
C-2 0.6 794 3.18 1.8 2.9
C-3 1 1254 4.93 2.8 4.5
S.-S. Park / Construction and Building Materials 25 (2011) 1134–1138 1137
30
is approximately 3, which is lower than that of 4.3 for the speci-
men in this study with 4% cement ratio and 1% fiber ratio. This in-
20 dex can be applied to evaluate the ductility or deformability of
cemented sand that is reinforced by various fibers. This index
may indicate the degree of fiber extensibility in cemented sand
10
and aid in the selection of suitable fibers for a given cementation.
When the cement ratio is constant, the stress–strain curve
0 tends to decrease gradually following the peak strength as the fiber
0 2 4 6 8
ratio increases. In the case of qc = 6%, the fiber ratios of 0.3% and
Cement ratio (%) 0.6% may not be enough to satisfy the ductility that is required
Fig. 6. Secant elastic modulus, E50, of FRCS with different cement ratios.
of the cemented specimen. Fig. 8a and b describe the axial strain
at peak strength for a specimen with the same cement ratio but
different fiber ratios in 2D and 3D plots. It is found that, when
appears between the yield and ultimate states. Maher and Ho [20] the fiber ratio is constant, the peak strain at peak strength is almost
and Consoli et al. [7] defined a stress based index called the brittle- the same, regardless of the cement ratio. Fig. 9 shows the 1% fiber-
ness index (IB), which is the ratio of the failure (or peak) deviatoric reinforced cemented sample before and at failure. The failure of the
stress to the ultimate (or steady) state deviatoric stress in triaxial fiber-reinforced cemented specimen occurred due to slippage be-
testing, described as a ‘‘brittle component” by Fang and Harrison tween the sand particles and the fibers. For lightly cemented soils,
[10]. However, there is still a difficulty in defining an ultimate state the use of PVA fiber seems to produce a strong frictional interac-
(or steady state) for soils, especially for unconfined compression tion between the fibers and the soil particles. As a result, PVA fi-
tests as shown in Figs. 1–3.
In this study, the term ‘deformability index’ is proposed and de-
fined to describe the ductility of FRCS as follows:
(a) 6.0
Cement ratio=2%
Dfiber Cement ratio=4%
Axial strain at peak strength (%)
D¼ ð3Þ 5.0
Cement ratio=6%
Dno fiber
In Eq. (3) Dfiber is the axial strain at peak strength in FRCS, and 4.0
Dno fiber is the axial strain at peak strength in non-fiber-reinforced
cemented sand. The strain-based index, D, can be determined by 3.0
comparing the axial strain at peak strength of any fiber-reinforced
cemented specimen to that of a non-fiber-reinforced cemented
2.0
specimen. Even though most definitions are usually defined on
one curve, the index, D, uses two stress–strain curves, one each
1.0
from non-fiber-reinforced and fiber-reinforced cemented speci-
mens, as illustrated in Fig. 7. The index is useful when either a peak
stress or a residual stress state is not clearly observed. However, its 0.0
0 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2
applications are limited to the cemented specimens that have the
Fiber ratio (%)
same cement ratio. The index, D, is calculated and summarized
(b)
Axial strain at peak strength (%)
Stress
Fiber-reinforced specimen
Non-fiber-reinforced specimen
)
(%
, ρf
Δ no fiber Strain Ceme
nt ratio tio
, ρ (% er ra
) Fib
c
Δ fiber
Fig. 8. Axial strain at peak strength of FRCS with different fiber ratios: (a) 2D plot
Fig. 7. Deformability index, D, under unconfined compression test. and (b) 3D plot.
1138 S.-S. Park / Construction and Building Materials 25 (2011) 1134–1138
References
[1] Abdulla AA, Kiousis PD. Behavior of cemented sands-I testing. Int J Numer Anal
Methods Geomech 1997;21:533–47.