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Model Footing Tests and Analytical Studies on Clayey Soil Bed Reinforced with Coconut Shell Mat

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Abstract

The cellular confinement systems are becoming popular in ground improvement because of their efficiency in improving the bearing capacity of soil due to the lateral confinement effect. The commercially available geocells are made from polymer materials and they are costly. This study presents the performance evaluation of coconut shell mat as a cellular confinement system in clayey soil. It is the first of its kind application of coconut shells for soil reinforcement through a lateral confinement mechanism. This soil reinforcement system using coconut shells is termed “Geococoshell” by the authors. A series of model plate load tests were conducted on unreinforced soil, soil reinforced with High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) geocells, and soil reinforced with coconut shell mats to evaluate the performance of coconut shell mat reinforced soil bed. The results of the experiments showed that coconut shells reinforced clayey soil improved bearing capacity up to 1.5 times compared to HDPE geocell reinforced clayey bed. The effect of different patterns of placing coconut shell mat was also studied and discussed in the paper. The analytical studies have been conducted considering the reinforcement mechanisms of coconut shell mat embedded in the soil bed.

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Data Availability Statement

All the data used are available inside the manuscript.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the funding received from the IMPRINT-2 program of DST/SERB with MHRD towards the project titled ‘Impounding of River floodwaters along Dakshina Kannada Coast: A sustainable strategy for water resource development’ (IMP/2018/001298). The authors thank the Editor and anonymous reviewers for their critical comments which helped in improving the technical content and quality of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal, Mangaluru, 575025, India

    Sreevalsa Kolathayar

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, India

    Renuka Sai Gadekari

Authors
  1. Sreevalsa Kolathayar
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  2. Renuka Sai Gadekari
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The first author conceptualized the idea and designed the experiments. The second author performed the experiments and analysis. Both authors contributed to writing the paper.

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Correspondence to Sreevalsa Kolathayar.

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Kolathayar, S., Gadekari, R.S. Model Footing Tests and Analytical Studies on Clayey Soil Bed Reinforced with Coconut Shell Mat. Int. J. of Geosynth. and Ground Eng. 8, 28 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40891-022-00375-1

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