Influence of waste masks on clay soil properties

Use of disposable face masks, gloves and other personal hygiene materials in daily life has increased significantly the waste materials with the COVİD'19 around the world. While the increase in these used masks poses the majority threat to the environment, their disposal has also emerged as a problem. It was thought that the use of face masks in soil improvement would be a method to solve this problem. Therefore, 0,5*1 cm sized of face masks were added to the low plasticity clay with the ratio of 0,2; 0,4; 0,6; 0,8 and 1,0 % in the article study and for the larger-scale study 0,5*2 cm and 0,5*3 cm was subjected. Samples are prepared at different unit weights. Bender element and unconfined compression experiments are conducted to determine the effects of face masks to strength and small strain stiffness. Unconfined compression experiment results showed that the face mask inclusion increased the strength up to a certain extent and then decreased the strength. Shear wave velocity of the samples decreased for high unit weights but, increased initially and then decreased in case of low unit weight samples. Keywords: Bender Element Test, Waste face mask, Unconfined compression strength, Soil improvement