Property characterization of plastic-coated water hyacinth fiber geotextile on clayey subgrade/ Kristen Rae R. Handyan, Peter Stefan Otto S. Keller, Ed Harvey L. Limos, Mark Jason D. Marbibi, Jersey Mae G. Perlas

Includes bibliography

The buildings, roads, pavements, and other structures we have today are all rooted in a good and strong foundation that mostly is built in soil. Without a good one, a structure will not be possible to be built, that is why soil is very important. The soil itself can have many types and not all can be quite suitable to be used as a foundation. For that reason, soil reinforcements are made, such as geotextiles. Geotextiles are mostly composed of fibers, and water hyacinth, an invasive plant that is basically considered a waste but is a good source of fiber. Speaking of waste, plastics have also been a problem for years now unfortunately but plastic together with the water hyacinth is made into something more useful rather than ending up in dumpsters. This study aims to utilize the water hyacinth fibers to be made into a geotextile to be coated using the plastic that will be used as reinforcement in clayey subgrade by testing its CBR strength. The fibers of the water hyacinth were extracted and dried. The single fiber tensile strength and fineness of the fiber were then tested with a result of 88.07 gf and 38.05 den respectively. The fibers were then treated under 10% Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) solution before it was weaved into two 4 m × 1 m geotextile with 12 mm aperture size. After that, one of the weaved geotextiles is coated using plastic bubble wraps from delivery parcels using a heat gun. The current study discovered that an uncoated geotextile has a mass per unit area of 1061.62 g/m2 and a thickness of 4.50 mm, whercas a coated geotextile has a mass per unit arca of 1557.41 g/m2 and a thickness of 6.68 mm. The results of the elongation and tensile strength tests on the geotextile were 17.33% and 217.08 kN/m for the coated geotextile and 17.00% and 217.29 kN/m, respectively. As per the results of testing for water absorption, the uncoated water hyacinth fiber has a higher water absorption percentage, with an average result of 206.45 %, compared to the coated water hyacinth geotextile, which had an average result of 96.72 %. The average thickness swelling result for the uncoated water hyacinth geotextile was 90,26 percent, which is larger than the average result for the coated water hyacinth geotextile of 44.29 %. Finally, the CBR findings for coated and uncoated geotextile were 2.61 % and 2.15 %, respectively.