Abstract
Loess is the most common building material in Northwest China. However, because of its loose accumulation, it is always unable to satisfy the requirements of actual engineering. In this paper, the effect of randomly distributed polypropylene fiber length (PPL), polypropylene fiber content (PPC), bentonite (B), and cement (C) on unconfined compressive strength (UCS) and permeability coefficient were investigated, and the optimum conditions were determined. The Taguchi method was applied to the experiments to choose the optimum conditions as 6-mm PPL (1), 0.3% PPC (2), 3% B (2), and 8% C (3), which abbreviated as PPBC loess. Meanwhile, by comparing the PPBC loess with lime–loess; it was found that the PPBC loess was significantly better than the lime–loess sample in terms of both UCS and permeability. The microstructure of PPBC loess and lime–loess was investigated by scanning electron microscope (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). It was exhibited that the reinforcement of lime–loess was mainly realized by producing C–S–H gels through chemical reactions, and the properties of the PPBC loess were improved by the physical reinforcement of polypropylene fibers and the chemical effects of cement. Moreover, according to the results of FTIR and NMR that the improvement of the mechanical properties of PPBC loess was caused by the increase of the adsorption band intensity and the decrease of pores, the mechanical properties of lime–loess with different contents were mainly affected by the decrease of pores.
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Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant no. 2019T120873 and Grant no. 2018M631117), Postdoctoral Research Project in Shaanxi Province (Grant no. 2018BSHGZZHQYXMZZ26), the Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 41931285), and the key research and development program of Shaanxi Province (Grant no. 2019ZDLSF05-07).
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Wan-kui Ni and Xiang-fei Lü designed research; Kang-Ze Yuan and Min Zhu performed all experiments and analyzed the data; Kang-Ze Yuan and Xiang-fei Lü wrote the paper; Min Zhu assisted in analyzing the data. The map data in Fig. 1 was provided by the Data Center for Resources and Environmental Science, Chinese Academy of Science (RESDC) (http://www.resdc.cn). All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Yuan, Kz., Ni, Wk., Lü, Xf. et al. Experimental study on the performance of the modified loess by polypropylene fiber mixed with bentonite and cement. Bull Eng Geol Environ 81, 302 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-022-02800-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-022-02800-1