Experimental Studies on the Cracking Response of Geofiber Reinforced Expansive Soils

Expansive soils are widespread in major parts of India and Australia. These swell in presence of water and shrink in its absence, leading to development of desiccation cracks. They influence the overall engineering behaviour like seepage, consolidation, compressibility and shear strength characteristics of the soil and thereby cause problems during field applications. This thesis examines the desiccation cracking behaviour of unreinforced and fiber-reinforced expansive clay using physical model testing at laboratory scale and small-scale physical model testing using centrifuge modelling technique. Thereafter to identify the influence of fiber length, influence of fiber content, influence of specimen thickness and influence of fiber type on the on crack feature measurements such as crack width, crack spacing, crack depth, crack intensity factor, tensile strength and shrinkage strain of unreinforced and fiber-reinforced expansive clay.