International Seminar on Infrastucture Development in Cluster Island Eastern Part of Indonesia, Baubau, Indonesia

UTILIZING OF FIBER ADMIXTURES ON THE VOLCANIC SOIL FOR LANDFILL COVER SYSTEM
T. Harianto 1 and St. Hijraini Nur
2

ABSTRACT: Regarding the long term function of the cover barrier system, the desiccation risk of compacted clay liners is the central relevancy because desiccation will cause cracks in the compacted mineral liner anyway, sooner or later and will reduce the sealing effect of the cover system dramatically. The objective of this study was focused on the influence of C3H6 (polypropylene) fiber reinforcement on the compacted volcanic soil. The laboratory test was conducted to investigate the effects of fiber reinforcement on desiccation crack behavior the compacted of volcanic soils potentially used as a landfill cover barrier system. It is shown that the addition of fibers causes the beneficial change in engineering properties of the volcanic soil. During the desiccation process, the volumetric shrinkage strain occurred in compacted soil-fiber mixed and was found as a direct function of the volume of water change when the soil is in drying process. In brief, this improvement of soil behavior due to fiber addition suggests the potential application of fiber addition to soils as an available method to suppress desiccation crack problem encountered in landfill cover hydraulic barrier. Keywords: Fiber admixture, Compaction, Desiccation crack, Landfill.

INTORDUCTION Compacted cohesive soils with low hydraulic conductivity (silt,clay) are commonly used as a landfill cover barrier and bottom liner material. Regarding the long term function of the cover barrier system, the desiccation risk of compacted clay liners is the central relevancy because desiccation will cause cracks in the compacted mineral liner anyway, sooner or later and will reduce the sealing effect of the cover system dramatically (Witt et all, 2005). Albrecht and Benson (2001) showed that the hydraulic conductivity increased due to cracking about three orders of magnitude. A variety of research efforts have attempted to overcome the problems of desiccation cracking in cover system. Some have considered the use of surface moisture barriers above the soil layer. A few have considered soil additives (lime, sand, and cement) to increase the soil strength and resistance to cracking (Omidi et al. 1996; Leung and Vipulanandan 1995). The interest of using fibers has arisen to suppress desiccation cracks of landfill bottom compacted clay liner as well as increase the ductility of the landfill bottom compacted clay liners without changing the physical properties of the soil (Miller et al., 2004; Al Wahab and El-Kedrah, 1995). However, using fiber as additives to suppress the

landfill cover barrier material has not received sufficient attention. The objective of this study was focused on the influence of C3H6 (polypropylene) fiber reinforcement on the compacted volcanic soil. The laboratory test was conducted to investigated the effects of fiber reinforcement on desiccation crack behavior the compacted of soils potentially used as a landfill cover barrier system. MATERIAL AND METHODS For the present study, the materials used are volcanic soil and polypropylene (C3H6) fiber. A soil specimen obtained from Kumamoto Prefecture was used for physical properties test. The soil specimens were kept in box under room conditions (252oC, 501% relative humidity) prior to testing. Polypropylene fiber is become a common synthetic material used to reinforce soil and concrete (Maher and Ho 1994; Al Wahab and El-Kedrah 1995; Nataraj and McManis 1997; Synthetic Industries 1998). The primary attraction is that of low cost (Moncrieff 1979). It is easy to mix with soil and has relatively high melting point which makes it possible to place the fibrous soil in the oven and conduct the moisture tests without changing the physical properties of the soil. Also, polypropylene is a hydrophobic and

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Tri Harianto, Hasanuddin University, Makassar 90245, INDONESIA St. Hijraini Nur, Hasanuddin University, Makassar 90245, INDOESIA

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soil and fibers were then placed in the bowl in alternating rows with five rows of soil and four rows of fibers. The bowl was placed in the mixer using a solid flat paddle. The type of mixer used is ES-DBF model Table 1. Properties of polypropylene fiber (split-phase start induction motor). The soil-fiber Properties Value admixture was mixed for 5 minutes with low speed (1430 rpm) and 2.5 minutes with high speed (1720 rpm). Specific gravity 0.91 The soil sample was mixed with various percentages of Fineness 15-19 (dtex) fiber additives of 0.0, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, and 1.2% respectively. Tensile strength 2.0 - 6.0 (cN/dtex) The standard Proctor compaction apparatus was used to compact the soil samples at various water contents Rate of elasticity deformation 70 - 150 (%) according to ASTM D698-70. Compaction energy was Melt point 160 (oC) equal to the compaction energy used in standard Proctor compaction tests, 593 kJm-3. The compaction dtex = 10g/cm results provide information on the maximum dry unit Table 2. Physical properties of Akaboku soil weight and optimum water content for each fibrous soil investigated. For the desiccation crack test, soil Properties Akaboku specimens were prepared with 30 cm in diameter and 10 Specific gravity, Gs 2.59 cm in height. A fan was used to simulate wind condition Liquid limit, w L (%) on the soil surface and to increase the rate of air drying 162.0 under room conditions (162oC, 35 62% relative Plastic limit, w P (%) 81.7 humidity). The surficial dimensions of cracks were Shrinkage limit, w S (%) 48.9 monitored during the tests. Crack dimension are generally measured using an image pixel method. Grain size distribution : DataPicker ver.1.2 was used to analyze the crack area. - Sand (%) 35 The areas were determined using photographs of 52 - Silt (%) desiccating soils. Crack Intensity Factor (CIF) was used 13 - Clay (%) as a parameter to evaluate the desiccation cracks of soils. CIF is defined as CIF = Ac/At, in which AC = the The fibers are produced in fibrillated bundles. If the desiccation crack area those whose width are more than fibers are added to the soil during mixing cycle, the 1 mm and At = the total surface area of soils. The mixing action opens the bundles and separates them into maximum crack depth was recorded using measurement multifilament fibers. In this study, the polypropylene with thin gauge wires. Also in this study, the volumetric RCP17T with 10mm length and 50 m shrinkage in diameter is strains behavior were observed. The fiber used. Summary of the properties of polypropylene fiber content (FC) used was varied as 0.0, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0 and that was used in this study are presented in Table 1. 1.2%. All of the specimens were prepared by compaction The basic properties of soil such as grain size under the conditions of maximum dry density and analysis, specific gravity of soil solids and Atterberg optimum water content. limits (liquid limit, plastic limit and shrinkage limit) were determined according to standard practice ASTM RESULT AND DISCUSSION Methods D422-63, D854-58, D4318-00, and D427-61. The summary of physical properties data are Initially, the standard Proctor compaction tests were summarized in Table 2. For shrinkage limit test, five conducted. The results of the compaction test with different samples were used and the soil samples were various FC are shown in Fig. 1. The addition of fiber mixed with FC of 0.0, 0.6, and 1.0% respectively. affected both the maximum dry unit weight and the The mixing procedure in the making of sample was optimum water content. The maximum dry unit weight as follows. The soil was slightly air dried to bring the increased and reached its peak at FC of 1.0 %, while the water content below the measured optimum moisture maximum dry unit weight increased about 9.03 kN/m3, content (OMC), and then determine the water content. which is about 11% higher than the initial value of The dry soil was grinded and passed through a No.10 natural soil. For FC of 1.0%, the optimum water content sieve. The weight of fibers was calculated based on dry varied within approximately 13% of the initial value of weight to be added to the soil sample. The soil water the natural soil. Except for FC of 1.2%, with the increase content at the mixing was 5% less then the OMC. The chemically inert material which does not absorb or react with the soil moisture or leachate.

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Utilizing of Fiber Admixtures on the Volcanic Soil for Landfill Cover System in FC, the maximum dry unit weight increased while optimum water content decreased. inclusion of fiber in volcanic soil which is used in this study affected on the shrinkage limit significantly. The elevated shrinkage limit of the soil with fiber additives is benefit to the volumetric shrinkage since the water content of the soils may easily reaches the shrinkage
12.2 11.8 11.4
Dry unit weight (kN/m3)
FC = 0.0% FC = 0.6% FC = 0.8% FC = 1.0% FC = 1.2%

11 10.6 10.2 9.8 9.4 9 8.6 8.2 7.8 20 30 40 50 60

70

80

Fig. 1. Standard proctor compaction curves for various fiber contents

1.45
Normalized dry unit weight (d(t)/d(o))

Average water content, w av (%)

Fig. 3. Dry unit weight versus average water content

1.3

1.15
FC = 0.0% FC = 0.6% FC = 0.8% FC = 1.0% FC = 1.2%

0.85 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 Normalized water content (w avg(t)/w avg(o))
Fig. 4. Normalized curve of dry unit weight versus water content

Fig. 2. Shrinkage limit for various fiber contents

Fig. 2 showed the results of shrinkage limit test with various FC. It was found that for the volcanic soil, the shrinkage limit significantly increased by about 20% with FC of 1.0%, and slightly decreased with FC of 1.2%. The results of different soils showed that for the volcanic soil, Kuroboku soil, and Ariake clay, the shrinkage limit increased with increasing in FC. For the Kuroboku soil, the shrinkage limit increased by about 10% with FC of 1.0%. However, there is no significant increase in shrinkage limit for the Ariake clay. For the Arita clay and Kaolinite, initially the shrinkage limit increased and reached its peak at FC of 0.6 % and decreased with FC of 1.0 %. According to these tests, the

limit during desiccation process. This behavior will give benefit for the soil-fiber mixed while desiccation processes exist in the field. When desiccation occur in the field, the soil-fiber mixed which have higher shrinkage limit will have less change in volume than soil without fiber additive. The cover barrier system with less shrinks and contains fewer and smaller cracks should have lower hydraulic conductivity. However, the effect of fiber inclusion on the shrinkage limit of the Arita clay, Ariake clay (Kawazoe), and kaolinite was found not significant. The change in dry unit weight of each soil-fiber mixed was presented in Fig. 3. The dry unit weight increased with decreasing in water content. The highest value was found in the soil of FC = 1.0%. Fig. 4 showed

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that there is no significant change in trend behavior of dry density of soil with fiber admixture. The behavior of the soils due to the change in water content was influenced by the inclusion of fiber in the soil as we can
20
Volumetric shrinkage strain , V/Vo (%)

18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 10 20 30 40 50 60

FC = 0.0% FC = 0.6% FC = 0.8% FC = 1.0% FC = 1.2%

found to be 1.0%. However, the case FC=1.2% did not significantly reduced the volumetric shrinkage strain due to the FC might be exceeding the optimum limit. The similar trends with the normalized water content were shown in Fig. 6, which indicated that there is no significant effect of the initial condition of water content to the volumetric shrinkage strain.
3
FC = 0.0%

Crack Intensity Factor, CIF (%)

2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0

FC = 0.6% FC = 0.8% FC = 1.0% FC = 1.2%

70

80

90

Average water content, w avg (%)

Fig. 5. Volumetric shrinkage strain for various fiber contents

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Volumetric shrinkage strain, V/Vo (%)

20

70 40 50 factor 60 30 Fig. 4. Crack Intensity (CIF) for Average water content, w (%)

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18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1

Maximum crack depth (mm)
FC = 0.0% FC = 0.6% FC = 0.8% FC = 1.0% FC = 1.2%

Fig. 7. Crack intensity factor (CIF) for various fiber contents

60

50

40

ln D = 5.05 0.06 wav

30

Normalized water content, w av(t) /w av(o)

Fig. 6. Normalized water content versus volumetric shrinkage strain

20

10

find in the Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 Fig. 5 showed that with increase in FC, the volumetric shrinkage strain of soil-fiber mixture decreased. The lowest value of volumetric shrinkage strain was observed at FC of 1.0%, which represents approximately 51% reduction of volumetric shrinkage strain as compared to the natural soil specimen. This can be explained by that the total contact area between soil particles and fibers increased with increasing FC which can provide more resistance during the desiccation process. With the higher FC, more fibers fill the voids in soil and subsequently give small change in volume during drying process due to the soil specimen density become higher. Based on the volumetric shrinkage strain tests, the range of optimum fiber content to achieve approximately maximum volume change reduction was

FC = 0.0% FC = 0.6% FC = 0.8% FC = 1.0% FC = 1.2%

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

0 0

Average water content,

wa

(%)

Fig. 8. Relationship between water content and crack depth

The observed CIF for soil with fiber content is almost zero except for FC of 1.0%, which corresponds to CIF of about 0.5% as shown in Fig. 7. Cracks developed rapidly in the soil without fiber admixture for average water content less than 50% (CIF increased from 0 to 2.75) and remained at this value for the subsequent desiccation process. The maximum CIF obtained was about 2.75%. CIF of the soil without fiber admixture is almost 4 times higher than the soil with FC of 1.0 %. Small amount of cracks were found in soil with FC of 1.0%, of which

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Utilizing of Fiber Admixtures on the Volcanic Soil for Landfill Cover System might be due to the lower of OMC. It was observed that the extent of cracking is a function of the amount of water in the soil during drying process. The cracking behavior significantly affected by the change in the water content for natural soil (FC=0%). The relationship between average water content (wav ) and crack depth (D) was made in this study which is shown in Fig. 8. Good correlation exists between wav and D for natural soil (FC=0%). The equation can be used as a simple correlation to predict the maximum depth of cracks in the field which is found in the previous study that the crack depth greatly increases the hydraulic conductivity (Vipulanandan and Leung, 1990). Fig. 8 showed the correlation and the curvilinear relationship gives. ln D = 5.05 0.06 w av (1) Fig. 9 (a) and (b) indicate the picture of surficial cracking for natural (FC = 0%) and soil-fiber mixed (FC = 0.8%). The cracks were found in the soil of FC = 0% than those shown in the soil of FC = 0.8%. The most severe cracking occurred in specimen with the highest volumetric shrinkage strain (FC = 0%). In contrast, specimens with fiber admixture indicated very small amount of cracks (almost zero) and these specimens had the lower volumetric shrinkage strain. Similar behavior should be expected in the field, although in the field some amount of cracking should be expected because even small volumetric strain are likely to result in the formation of some cracks. CONCLUSION The effects of fiber addition on desiccation cracks behavior of volcanic soil were investigated in this study, the following Conclusions resulted from this study : 1.It is shown that the addition of fibers causes the beneficial change in engineering properties of the volcanic soil. During the desiccation process, the volumetric shrinkage strain occurred in compacted soilfiber mixed and was found as a direct function of the volume of water change when the soil is in drying process. 2.With an increase in the fiber content, the volumetric shrinkage strain decreased. Soil specimen with the high amount of cracks typically has the largest value of volumetric shrinkage strain. 3.Fiber addition in the soil decreased the CIF significantly. It was observed that crack reduction was affected by the fiber inclusion in the soil.
(a)

4.In brief, this improvement of soil behavior due to fiber addition suggests the potential application of fiber addition to soils as an available method to suppress desiccation crack problem encountered in landfill cover hydraulic barrier.

(b)

Fig. 9. Soil-fiber admixture (a) FC = 0% and (b) FC = 0.8%

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to acknowledge financial support for this study provided by the Kajimas Foundation Research Grant.

REFERENCES Albrecht, B.A., and Benson, C.H. (2001). Effect of desiccation on compacted natural clays. J. of Geotechnical and Geoenviron. Eng., ASCE, (1),67-75. . Al Wahab, R. M., and El-Kedrah, M. A. (1995). Using fibers to reduce tension cracks and shrink/swell in compacted clay. Geoenvironment 2000,

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Geotechnical Special Publication N0. 46, ASCE, New York, 791-805. . Leung, M., and Vipulanandan, C. (1995). Treating Contaminated, Cracked and permeable field clay with grouts. Proc. Specialty Conf. on Geotechnical Practice in Waste Disposal, Geotechnical Special Publication, ASCE, New York, 829-843. .Maher, M. H., and Ho, Y. C. (1994). Mechanical properties of kaolinite fiber soil composite. J. Geotech. Eng., 120(8), 1381-1393. .Miller, C. J., and Rifai, S. (2004). Fiber reinforcement for waste containment soil liners. J. of Environ. Eng., ASCE, (8),891-895. .Moncrieff, R. W. (1979). Man made fibers, NewnesButterworths, U.K.9. .Nataraj, M. S., and McManis, K. L. (1997). Strength and deformation properties of soil reinforced with fibrillated fibers. Geosynthet. Int., 4(1), 65-79.

.Omidi, G. H., Prasad, T. V., Thomas, J. C., and Brown, K. W. (1996). Influence of amendments on the volumetric shrinkage and integrity of compacted clay soils used in landfill liners. Water, Air, Soil Pollut., 86(1-4), 263-274. Synthetic Industries. (1998). Literature, Fibermesh Division, Chattanooga, Tenn. Vipulanandan, C., and Leung, M. (2005). Laboratory evaluation of repairing cracked kaolinite clay under hazardous wastes environment. Proceeding of the 7th National Conference on Hazardous Wastes and Hazardous materials, St. Louis, MO, pp. 119-122. Witt, K. J., and Zeh, R. M. (2005). Cracks due to desiccation in cover lining systems phenomena and design strategy. Intl. Workshop LIRIGM, Grenoble University, France.

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