Experimental Studies on Load Settlement Behavior of Cohesion less Soil using Bamboo

The advent of industrialization has led to implementation various modern structures and mega construction but due to lack of good quality of soil it has become difficult for engineers to work or build on it. Ground improvement is required to change various properties of soil such as removal of air voids, increase in shear strength, reduction in compressibility etc. More over susceptibility to liquefaction, permeability etc can be also reduced by these techniques. Micro pilings, use of geotextile, use of reinforcement are some of such technique available. An attempt has been made to use bamboo mats in single layers in sub grade soil to improve the bearing capacity. Bamboo mats are cheap, locally available and may prove to be a sustainable solution in this field. At first bearing capacity of sub grade soil has been found out experimentally in the load test arrangement and the analytical values have been calculated by using Terzaghi (1943), Meyerhof (1963), Hansen(1957,1970), Vesic (1973), IS: 6403-1981. Proximity in experimental and analytical results (Terzaghi) in particular validates the acceptability of the experimental results. Comparison was done for bearing capacity of the sub grade with and without usage of bamboo as reinforcement. The parameters studied in this experimental investigation included the effects of the location of the top reinforcement layer of the bamboo grid.