EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON MILD AND TOR STEEL AS SOIL REINFORCEMENT.

Reinforced earth construction offers great promise as an alternative and economically viable solution to a diversity of technically challenging problems in civil engineering. The economy of the reinforced earth mostly depends upon the frictional strength of the reinforcement and the soil. The insitu application of torsteel as soil reinforcement is recommended by T. S. Nagaraj et al. In this investigation the frictional property of torsteel has been compared with ordinary mild steel bar through pull-out tests. The apparatus described previously by the authors has been used. Three different sands and three different densities are used in this investigation. The three different densities are 1. 34 gm/cm**3 1. 40 gm/cm**3 and 1. 59 gm/cm**3. The reinforcements used are 12. 0 mm dia smooth M. S bar and 12. 5 mm dia torsteel with an effective lengths of 30. 5 cms. It has been found that the frictional strength of torsteel is almost double in the case of loose and medium density while it is nearly 2. 5 times at high density for the same order of deformation. The pull-out length for torsteel at failure for loose density was 2 to 6 times that of mild steel while for medium density it was 2 to 3 times. At high density the pull-out length for torsteel was one half of the mild steel at failure. Thus, torsteel has a very good scope in insitu reinforced earth as soil reinforcement.