Geotechnical properties of fiber reinforced pond ash

Abstract

In the recent past huge amount of Fly ash and Pond ash are generated by the thermal power plants. It is a major cause of concern for the people living around the power
plants. The current rate of deposition of Pond ash in India has reached 170 million tons per annum. About 90,000 acres of precious land is used for the storage of abandoned
Pond ash. But current rate of utilization of ash is only about 35-40%.The unused ash leads to an ever increasing ponding area for storing ash and related environmental
issues for the people around the power plants.
Besides this, over the last few years, the construction of highways and roads has taken a boost. This requires a huge amount of natural soil and aggregates to excavated or to
be deposited. Again this is an environmental issue and economical too. These are some issues now-a-days which motivates in development of alternative methods to overcome
those environmental and also the economic issues. This leads to the reuse of suitable industrial byproducts which can fix those issues and also fulfill the specifications. Pond ash is one such byproduct. It is a non-plastic and lightweight material. During this work, the effect of moisture content, degree of compaction, synthetic fiber
as a reinforcement etc. on various geotechnical properties of pond ash are studied. A series of tests such as direct shear test, CBR test, light compaction as well as heavy
compaction test, Unconfined compression test are done to estimate the strength characteristics of compacted pond ash using synthetic fiber as a reinforcement as well as
tests like specific gravity test, grain size distribution test by mechanical sieve analysis and hydrometer test etc. are performed to obtain some physical properties of the pond
ash.These results will be very much helpful for the successful application of pond ash in different fields such as embankment construction, road base and sub-base construction, designing of retaining walls etc. as well as the disposal of pond ash in an ecofriendly manner.