Abstract
Reinforcing flexible pavements using different types of geosynthetics is a technique that is widely used to increase the service life, reduce the maintenance costs and, guarantee high performance throughout the service life. This paper presents the insights from combined experimental and numerical analysis conducted on organic soil reinforced with coir geotextiles. A series of small-scale in-box plate load tests were performed to investigate the behavior of coir geotextile reinforced high plastic organic soil under circular loading. Tests were conducted on both homogeneous (sub grade alone) and layered configurations. Two types of commercially available woven coir geotextiles viz. H2M5 and H2M6, were utilized to study the contribution of coir geotextiles when used as reinforcement at the interface of sub-base and subgrade layers in enhancing the strength and stiffness of the low volume road. The primary objective of this exploratory study is to investigate the improvement in the performance of the low volume pavement as a result of the added geotextile reinforcement. The key performance parameters, namely, displacement, stress and strain responses of both reinforced and unreinforced pavement sections are obtained by analyzing the pavement using ABAQUS, which is a software suite for Finite Element Method (FEM) analysis. Test results indicate that the coir geotextile reinforcement substantially improved the performance of high plastic organic subgrade. A maximum reduction of 38% and 24% in vertical strain was observed on top of the subgrade in the case of H2M5 and H2M6 coir geotextile reinforced sections, respectively. Also, a maximum reduction of 30% and 18% in vertical displacement was observed in the case of H2M5 and H2M6 coir reinforced sections, respectively. At an average radial distance of about 1 m from the center of simulated static wheel load, very small displacement and strain value were observed for reinforced sections, relative to the unreinforced sections. Hence, the conclusion is drawn that the H2M5 type of coir geotextile contributes more than the H2M6 type to the structural performance improvement of pavements when used as reinforcement.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Indian Roads Congress, Guidelines for the Design of Flexible Pavements for Low Volume Rural Roads. IRC SP 72. New Delhi, India, 2007.
C. N. Baker Jr., S. B. Steinberg, W. Lam, Building design and construction over organic soil, International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering, University of Missouri, Rolla, USA, Vol. 10, 1988, pp.1389–1393.
N. Tiwari, N. Satyam, Experimental study on the influence of polypropylene fiber on the swelling pressure expansion attributes of silica fume stabilized clayey soil, Geosci. 9 (9) (2019) 377.
N. Tiwari, N. Satyam, S. K. Shukla, An experimental study on micro-structural and geotechnical characteristics of expansive clay mixed with EPS granules, Soils and Foundations 60 (3) (2020) 705–713.
N. B. Hobbs, Mire morphology and the properties and behaviour of some British and foreign peats, Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology, London, 19 (1986) 7–80.
Y. Lu, S. Liu, Y. Zhang, Z. Li, L. Xu, Freeze-thaw performance of a cement-treated expansive soil, Cold Regions Sci. Technol. (2020) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coldregions.2019.102926.
N. Tiwari, N. Satyam, K. Singh, Effect of curing on microphysical performance of polypropylene fiber reinforced and silica fume stabilized expansive soil under freezing thawing cycles, Scientific Reports 10 (7624) (2020) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-64658-1.
N. Tiwari, N. Satyam, J. Patva, Engineering characteristics and performance of polypropylene fiber and silica fume treated expansive soil subgrade, Inter. J. Geosyn. Ground Eng. 6 (18) (2020) https://doi.org/10.1007/s40891-020-00199-x.
M. S. Hossain, B. N. Schmidt, Benefits of using geotextile between subgrade soil and base course aggregate in low-volume roads in Virginia. Final Report VTRC 10-R1. Virginia Transportation Research Council, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, 2009.
S. Flutcher, J. T. H. Wu, A state-of-the-art review on geosynthetics in low-volume asphalt roadway pavements, Inter. J. Geotech. Eng. 7 (4) (2013) 411–419.
M. K. Sayida, S. Y. Evangeline, M. S. Girish, Coir geotextiles for paved roads: a laboratory and field study using non-plastic soil as subgrade, J. Natural Fibres (2019) https://doi.org/10.1080/15440478.2019.1568344.
A. K. Singh, S. Mittal, Analysis of reinforced unpaved roads by modified structural number method, Inter. J. Geosyn. Ground Eng. 4 (1) (2018) 1–8.
I. Ismail, G. P. Raymond, Geosynthetic reinforcement of granular layered soils, Geosynthetics’95, Nashville, TN, IFAI, St. Paul, MN, USA, Vol. 1, 1995, pp. 317–330.
T. C. Kinney, J. Abbott, J. Schuler, Benefits of using geogrids for base reinforcement with regard to rutting, Transp. Res. Rec. 1611 (1) (1998) 86–96.
A. Cancelli, F. Montanelli, In-ground test for geosynthetic reinforced flexible paved roads, Proceedings of the conference Geosynthetics’99, Boston, MA, USA, 1999, pp. 863–878.
J. Leng, Characteristics and behaviour of geogrid reinforced aggregate under cyclic load, (PhD thesis), North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA, 2002.
M. Y. Abu-Farsakh, Q. Chen, Evaluation of geogrid base reinforcement in flexible pavement using cyclic plate load testing, Inter. J. Pavement Eng. 12 (3) (2011) 275–288.
S. Nithin, M. K. Sayida, Y. S. Evangeline, Experimental investigation on coir reinforced subgrade, Proceedings Indian Geotech. Conference, Delhi, India, 2012.
N. Tiwari, N. Satyam, An experimental study on the behavior of lime and silica fume treated coir geotextile reinforced expansive soil subgrade, Eng. Sci. Technol. (2020) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jestch.2019.12.006.
R. Hufenus, R. Rueegger, R. Banjac, O. Mayor, S. M. Springman, R. Bronnimann, Full scale field tests on geosynthetic reinforced unpaved roads on soft subgrade. Geotextiles Geomembranes 24 (2006) 21–37.
M. A. Kamel, S. Chandra, P. Kumar, Behaviour of subgrade soil reinforced with geogrid, Inter. J. Pavement Eng. 5 (4) (2004) 201–209.
M. S. Chauhan, S. Mittal, B. Mohanty, Performance evaluation of silty sand subgrade reinforced with fly ash and fibre. Geotextiles Geomembranes 26 (2008) 429–435.
G. W. Wathugala, B. Huang, S. Pal, Numerical simulation of geosynthetic-reinforced flexible pavements, Transp. Res. Rec. 1534 (1997) 58–65.
S. W. Perkins, M. Q. Edens, Finite element and distress models for geosynthetic-reinforced pavements, Inter. J. Pavement Eng. 3 (4) (2002) 239–250.
M. D. Nazzal, M. Y. Abu-Farsakh, L. N. Mohammad, Implementation of a critical state two-surface model to evaluate the response of geosynthetics reinforced pavements, Inter. J. Geomech. 10 (5) (2010) 202–212.
M. Kim, J. H. Lee, Effects of geogrid reinforcement in low volume flexible pavement, J. Civ. Eng. Manage. 19 (1) (2013) 14–32.
F. Gu, X. Luo, R. Luo, E. Y. Hajj, R. L. Lytton, A mechanistic-empirical approach to quantify the influence of geogrid on the performance of flexible pavement structures, Transp. Geotech. 13 (2017) 69–80.
M. Rahman, S. Saha, A. Hamdi, J. B. Alam, Development of 3-D finite element models for geo-jute reinforced flexible pavement, Civ. Eng. J. 5 (2) (2019) 437–446.
G. V. Rao, R. K. Dutta, Characterization of tensile strength behaviour of coir products, Electronic J. Geotech. Eng. 10 (B) (2005) 0520.
M. Y. Abu-Farsakh, J. Gu, G. J. Voyiadjis, Q. Chen, Mechanistic empirical analysis of the results of finite element analysis on flexible pavement with geogrid base reinforcement, Inter. J. Pavement Eng. 15 (9) (2014) 786–798.
National Cooperative Highway Research Program, Guide for the design of new and rehabilitated pavement structures. NCHRP 1-37A. ERES Division of ARA Inc., Champaign Illinois, USA, 2002.
A. Visvanathan, S. Velayudhan, S. Mathew, Field evaluation of coir geotextile reinforced subgrade for low volume pavements, J. Natur. Fibers (2020) https://doi.org/10.1080/15440478.2020.1758279.
Indian Roads Congress, Guidelines for the Design of Flexible Pavements. IRC 37. New Delhi, India, 2018.
E. O. Tastan, T. B. Edil, C. H. Benson, A. H. Aydilek, Stabilization of organic soils with fly ash, J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng. 137 (9) (2011) 819–833.
Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Guidelines for maintenance management of primary, secondary and urban roads, MORT&H, Government of India, India, 2004.
D. Lal, N. Sankar, S. Chandrakaran, Effect of reinforcement form on the behaviour of coir geotextile-reinforced sand through laboratory triaxial compression tests, Inter. J. Geotech. Eng. 12 (3) (2018) 309–315.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Additional information
Peer review under responsibility of Chinese Society of Pavement Engineering.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Anusudha, V., Sunitha, V. & Mathew, S. Performance of coir geotextile reinforced subgrade for low volume roads. Int. J. Pavement Res. Technol. 14, 213–221 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42947-020-0325-4
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42947-020-0325-4