Improvement of Compressive Strength of Soil by Using Jute Fiber Waste

To attain the desirable strength of soil, soil reinforcement has been playing a pivotal role for many decades. Although there are many well-established methods to reinforce the soil, but now-a-days people are looking for low-cost reinforcing materials. In Bangladesh jute waste is not being used effectively, although jute production is quite good in amount. From this point of view in this study, jute fiber is selected as reinforcing material and focused on improvement of compressive strength of soil. Varying proportions of Jute fiber as 1%, 2%, 3% and 4% have been mixed with dry soil to make the samples to be tested. The result indicated that the sample prepared with 3% of jute fiber gives the highest value in Unconfined Compressive Strength (UCS) test and adding more than 3% of jute fiber tends to decrease the UCS value. As this study has been done keeping in mind about the embankment construction process in the coastal zones of Bangladesh, where grass turfing is done to protect soil from erosion and inorganic fertilizer is used to grow up the grass which has long-term effect on the environment. On the other hand, jute is 100% biodegradable, when it comes to contact of moist soil, after a certain period it acts as the natural fertilizer that helps to grow up the grass and make the root of grass stronger to hold the soil.