Improvement of soil against piping phenomena by using artificial fiber

Soltannejad, Khaled; Raeesi Estabragh, Ali; Abdolahi Bik, Jamal; Omid, Mohammad Hosein

doi:10.22059/ijswr.2013.50216

Improvement of soil against piping phenomena by using artificial fiber

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Khaled Soltannejad ¹

Ali Raeesi Estabragh ²

Jamal Abdolahi Bik ³

Mohammad Hosein Omid ⁴

¹ Graduate Student of Hydraulic Structures, Department of Irrigation and Reclamation, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

² Assistant Professor of Irrigation and Reclamation Department, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

³ Instructor of Irrigation and Reclamation Department, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

⁴ Professor of Irrigation and Reclamation Department, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

10.22059/ijswr.2013.50216

Abstract

Piping sometimes is occurred due to seepage of water in hydraulic structures. The continuty of this phenomenon decreases the safety or caused the failure of a structure. In this work, experimental tests were carried out on statically compacted natural and randomly reinforced silt sandy soil samples. The randomly reinforced samples were prepared with different lengths and percentages of an artificial fiber. The tests were done in special designed and made apparatus. During the tests, seepage velocity, hydraulic gradient, permeability and seepage force were measured and calculated in different samples and compared with natural soil. The results showed that in the case of randomly reinforced soil, the resistance of soil against piping was increased.in addition, the increasing of the length and percentage of fiber also have important role in improvement of soil.

Keywords

critical hydraulic gradient

seepage velocity

soil reinforced

piping