Soil Sub-grade Improvement using Human Hair Fiber (HHF)

Published on 19 Apr 2022. Written by Sankarsan Mohanty

Accumulation of solid waste requires a large area for its disposal. Human hair fiber (HHF) a non- degradable matter is creating an environmental problem so its use in soil improvement can minimize the problem. Also human hair fiber available in abundance at a very low cost. The main purpose of this project is to understand and investigate the variations in the strength of the cohesive soils using human hair fibers (natural fiber) as a soil reinforcing material.

In this project, you need to mix HHF randomly with clayey soil samples and you need to perform a test for its engineering property (Strength) by performing CBR tests on a number of samples by using the different percentage of fibers and comparing the results with the non-reinforced soil. Fibers of different length and equivalent diameter should be used with an aspect ratio ranging from 295 to 500.

From the experimental result data, you need to plot various graphs for comparing no of samples in terms of their engineering property to determine the best sample.

From the test result, it will be revealed that the strength significantly improves with the inclusion of HHF and also prevents the sample from cracking. Moreover, an environmental concern is also included by utilization of waste human hair fiber materials and they can be made useful for improving the soil characteristics and to solve the problems related to the disposal of waste human hair fibers material.

Project Description:

Soil: The soil you are going to use in this project should be clayey in nature. You need to perform a various test on this to determine various engineering properties.
Human Hair Fiber: These fibers are considered as value less solid west, which creates environmental problems because of being no-biodegradable in nature. The length of this fiber varies from 5 to 50 and the aspect ratio varies from 290 to 500. These fibers are available all over the world with very cheap cost.

Project Implementation:

At first do some research on composite materials and its types and learn various process involved in manufacturing of composite material.
Then start gathering components required to fabricate the discussed composite material. You can collect human hair from your locality.
Wash them and air dry them to remove any impurity and minimize moisture content respectively.
Then prepare samples at the OMC and MDD with different percentages of fiber content i.e. 0%, 0.5%, 1%, 1.5%, 2%, 2.5%. Mix the fibers with air-dried soil. While adding the fibers be very careful.
Perform CBR test as quickly as possible, and keep a note of all the readings.
Compare your data to see which composition yields good engineering properties.

Project Brief: After successful completion of the project, you can observe the following things,

When the fiber content is around 0.25% MDD increases and OMC decreases.
But when the fiber content is increased more than 0.25% MDD decreases and OMC increases. This is because the soil particles rearrange itself with the randomly oriented fibers.

Software requirements:

Minitab: You can use this software for plotting and comparing your result data.

Kit required to develop Soil Sub-grade Improvement using Human Hair Fiber (HHF):

Technologies you will learn by working on Soil Sub-grade Improvement using Human Hair Fiber (HHF):

Soil stabilization

Soil Sub-grade Improvement using Human Hair Fiber (HHF)

Project Description:

Project Implementation:

Software requirements:

Any Questions?

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