ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: Geosynthetic materials like geotextiles, geogrids and geocells have gained widespread acceptance over recent years due to their superior engineering characteristics and quality control. The rising cost and the environmental concerns created by these synthetic reinforcement materials makes it necessary to explore alternate resources for soil reinforcement. Coir is an eco-friendly, biodegradable, organic material which has high strength, stiffness and durability characteristics compared to other natural reinforcement materials. This paper deals with a systematic series of plate load tests on unreinforced sand and sand reinforced with coir geotextiles. A significant enhancement in strength and stiffness characteristics was obtained with the provision of coir reinforcement. Based on the test results, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model has also been established for predicting the strength of sand beds when these reinforcement elements are applied practically. The predicted values from the model and those obtained from the experimental study are found to have a good correlation.
