The arid and semi-arid regions of the world are prevalent with expansive clays and owing to its high swell shrink characteristics, constructions on swelling soil is a challenge to the civil engineers. Hence, researchers have tried to improve its engineering properties by mixing it with different additives and in various other ways. However, it is worth mentioning here that ecological concern, affordability and potentiality makes natural fibres a viable alternative to other additives for the improvement of black cotton soils. Keeping this in view, attempt has been made in this paper to improve the engineering properties of black cotton soil with the inclusion of randomly distributed discrete coir fibres with different aspect ratio as well as coir pith into the soilmass. Also, in the era of rapid industrialization, deposition of flyash is turning uncontrollable day by day, in spite of its exploitation in several fields. Hence, flyash as well as a small proportion of cement was selected as additives to supplement the utilization prospect of coir fibre and coir pith. The results as obtained from the compaction tests, unconfined compression tests and CBR tests are presented and analyzed in this paper for the optimization of these materials.
Black cotton soil, Coir-fibre, Coir-pith, Flyash, Cement, Compaction, California Bearing Ratio, Unconfined Compressive Strength
