Fiber Reinforced Clay Liner

Permeability is one of the most important properties of sand-bentonite mixture which is used as a liner material at the waste disposal site, and needs to be understood for settlement analysis. When bentonite comes in contact with water, its swells and exhibits a lower value of hydrolic conductivity. However due to desiccation of bentonite, it shrinks and the hydraulic conductivity increases significantly. This is the general problem of compacted clay. Now a days a geo-synthetic clay liner (GCL) with equivalent performance may be used in place of a compacted clay liner. Furthermore, synthetic fiber generally used to reduce the shrinkage of clays. However, no studies have been carried out on fiber reinforced sand-bentonite mixture with geo-synthetic clay liner (GCL) inclusion. In order to check the influence of GCL and glass fiber on these parameters, such as swelling potential, swelling pressure, compression index, hydraulic conductivity, co-efficient of consolidation and unconfined compressive strength of the mixture. Bentonite-sand mixtures, mixed with fiber. Test result shows that hydraulic conductivity is reduced significantly with interaction of GCL then slightly increased with addition of glass fiber. It has also observed that compression index and swelling pressure reduced with addition of glass fiber. Swelling pressure was more for GCL inclusion. Compression index (cc) is found to be increased for GCL inclusion. Co-efficient of consolidation (cv) is found to be increased with the increased in consolidating pressure, indicating the mixtures gets consolidated at a higher rate under a higher overburden pressure. Unconfined compression strength decreased with addition of GCL due to effect of structural integrity of continuous soil column or predetermined failure plain has to be created automatically by inclusion of GCL. This behavior is confirmed that all the failure observed where GCL placed. Furthermore, UCS enhanced with inclusion of nylon fiber. Therefore, SB40+GCL+ 1% fiber composite is optimum combination which have to be used for landfill liners.