Performance evaluation of infill materials of geocell-reinforced granular bed overlying soft subgrade
- Vol.53(3), Jun
- USA Springer 2023
- 651-664p.
This paper evaluates the performance of various infill materials of geocell-reinforced granular beds through a model plate load test. Tests were performed on two different types of geocell, i.e., commercial geocell (CG)- and three-dimensional geogrid (TDG)-reinforced bed overlying soft subgrade. Three types of infill materials were used in this study, i.e., sand, crushed aggregate (CA), and recycled asphalt pavement (RAP). However, three different mixes of the CA were prepared based on maximum particle size, i.e., 10 mm (CA 10), 25 mm (CA 25), and 40 mm (CA 40), respectively. Further, the performance of infill materials was investigated on geocell with an additional basal mat of woven geotextile (WGT) and planar geogrid (PG). It was observed that the RAP-filled base layers fail at a higher footing settlement of 18–20% (s/B) than infill materials sand and CA, i.e., 6–12% (s/B). The maximum bearing capacity was observed as 455 kPa for CG with infill material CA25 and 556 kPa for TDG with infill material CA40. The performance of the CG improved 1.15–1.4 times with the inclusion of the basal WGT. However, with basal PG, the performance of TDG increased 1.5–1.9 times. Despite the higher tensile strength and flexural stiffness of the geogrid, the performance of the CG was better than the TDG with sand and CA10 as infill materials because of the higher confinement effect. The basal mat’s performance depends not only on its tensile strength but also on its flexural stiffness.