Effect of non-woven polypropylene geotextile on the mechanical properties of soil /polymer composite structures

In this paper, the effect of polypropylene (PP) geotextile as reinforcing phase in enhancing the mechanical properties of soil structures under different loading conditions is investigated. For this purpose, the effect of effective parameters such as type of surface geometry and the locality of loading on load-bearing capacity changes and the structure failure mechanism were studied using modeling by centrifuge method. Therefore, the horizontal and vertical displacements on the structure, which simulated by geotechnical centrifuge model, were recorded using the displacement measurement sensor and digital camera. The results show that for loads of the same width in the soil/PP composite structures, which is affected by the presence of PP reinforcing phase, whatever the shape of the loading support area changes from square to strip and the length of the loading level increases, the final load-bearing capacity of the structure will increase. Also, by examining the soil reinforcement PP fabric after the experiments, it was found that the maximum and minimum expansion rate of damage in PP reinforcing phase was related to the condition of the soil/PP composite structure, under loading with strip and square geometry, respectively.