Triaxial behaviour of geotextile reinforced sand

ABSTRACT In order to study the behaviour of reinforced sand, a series of monotonic consolidated drained and consolidated undrained triaxial tests was conducted on Chlef sand samples and, respectively, sand samples reinforced with one layer and two layers of geotextile reinforcement. Considering both the relatives densites of samples (Dr = 30% and 80%) and the different levels of confining pressure (p’c) of 50, 100, and 200 kPa. It is noticed from the obtained results that reinforcement contribution was evident in the drained condition than for the undrained one. Results have shown under low confining pressure that adding two layers of geotextile reinforcement to loose sample leads to an increase in the value of maximum shear strength significantly for undrained sample of about 97%, then it will be less important by increasing confining pressure up to 200 kPa; at this level, the maximum shear strength has become more pronounced for the drained reinforced sample. It was also observed that the dilation of dense samples has clearly affected by the confining pressure, and this should be mainly attributed to the low dilatancy property of Chlef sand.