Potential Applications of Waste Plastic Bottles Cells for the Improvement of the CBR of Soft Soils of Coastal Regions of Gujarat

The disposal of bio-nondegradable plastic waste bottles, extensively used as containers, poses a huge problem in developing countries like India. The urgent need to design a sustainable alternative to traditional chemical or mechanical ground improvement prompts the utilization of such wastes available in large quantities. Hence, an attempt is made to explore the potential use of waste plastic bottles in improving the strength of soft soils of coastal regions of Gujarat, the western part of India. The prime objective of the present work is to study the effects of Waste Plastic Bottles Cells (WPBC) used as geocell in improving the California Bearing Ratio (CBR) of the soft subgrade. In addition to the experimental work, finite element analysis using commercial software was performed to validate the present work. The WPBC, obtained from single-use Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) bottles, with an aspect ratio of 1.0 is filled with 20 mm size aggregates to develop geocell. Series of the CBR tests were conducted on unreinforced soil as well as on reinforced soil with variations in embedment depth and numbers of layers of WPBC. Additionally, tests were conducted on the soil samples by employing commercial geocell to compare the effectiveness of WPBC. The test results revealed that soil reinforced using the proposed WPBC geocell performed well to increase the load-carrying capacity by threefold in comparison to corresponding unreinforced soil. The test results suggest that the proposed technique performs at par with commercially available geocell and is highly cost-effective. Hence, the proposed WPBC seems to be an environmentally sustainable and economical solution to reinforce the soft subgrade.