Effects of Waste Plastic Strips (PET) on Improvement of Fine-grained Soil

Geotechnical and engineering structures transfer their loads to soil by foundation. Therefore, structures should be constructed on soil with high bearing capacity. Demand for suitable soil in civil engineering projects is high, but soil with high quality in terms of bearing capacity provides from long distance and uses. Although, this operation is extensive and time consuming. Social, economical and environmental challenges have been caused researchers find new method for improving soil behavior in terms of bearing capacity and strength. In the other side, waste materials such as plastic, wood, glass and etc. in terms of high volume production due to urban development and urbanization with high cost in disposal and maintenance have been caused serious researches for application of recycled waste materials in soils for improvement performed. Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) is one of the waste material which is permanent and causes environmental pollution. As regard to supply and demand of plastic waste (PET) is increasing, so recycling and re-use is one of the major purpose in engineering and environmental protection (John and Rodwan, 2012). Nowadays, about the use of waste plastic strip and PET different studies have been performed such as (Sivakumar Babu and Vasudevan, 2008), (Sivakumar Babu and Chouksey, 2011), (Dutta et al., 2012) and (Soltani-Jigheh, 2014) can be mentioned. Main idea of this research is evaluation of flexible waste plastic strips (PET=Polyethylene Terephthalate) effects on mechanical and geotechnical behavior of fine-grained soil.