Study of the Mechanical Behavior of a Clayey Soil with the Insertion of Polyethylene Terephthalate Flakes: Fid-Bau Portal

Study of the Mechanical Behavior of a Clayey Soil with the Insertion of Polyethylene Terephthalate Flakes

Louzada, N. S. L. / Casagrande, M. D. T.

Every year millions of bottles of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) are wrongly discarded into the environment. In order to reduce the disposal of this polymer in nature, this study aims to evaluate the mechanical behavior of a clayey soil-PET mixed with fine crushed PET. The potential use of this waste material in geotechnical applications may ultimately reduce the problem of wrong disposal. This paper presents an experimental study to evaluate the mechanical behavior of pure soil-PET and mixtures with different contents of PET waste by triaxial tests, in order to obtain the strength parameters of the soil-PET mixtures. The clayey soil-PET used was mixed with 3 and 5% of PET flakes by dry weight. Characterization tests such as grain size, Atterberg limits and compaction test were performed on the clayey material. Triaxial tests at confining stresses of 50, 150 and 300 kPa were done on the soil-PET and mixtures. The results show that the soil-PET strength parameters are influenced by the addition of the PET flakes, thus improving characteristics such as friction angle and cohesion of the soil-PET mixtures. This improvement also depends upon the confining level, which the samples were submitted. These mixtures may be used in landfill and other geotechnical works, so this paper proposes to contribute to a better understanding and interpretation of the behavior of soil-PET reinforced with PET waste.