Investigations of the usability of surgical waste masks in improving highway weak subgrade

In this study, surgical waste materials and geogrids were placed on the soil in certain configurations and subjected to experimental study under statics loads in order to increase the recovery of wastes and the bearing capacity of the subgrade. In the experimental studies, the effect of the depth in which the reinforcement materials are placed in the foundation and the number of reinforcement layers were examined. It has been observed that the foundation bearing pressure increases as the number of reinforcement elements used in the soil increases. When the depth at which the reinforcement elements placed in the foundation placed is reduced, load -bearing capacity has been found to have a remarkable increase. In the same conditions, it was determined that the ground reinforced with geogrid outperformed the ground reinforced with surgical waste masks. To compare the bearing capacity of reinforced soils with the bearing capacity of unreinforced soils, the mathematically expressed bearing capacity improvement factor (BCIF) is used. The BCIF value of the soil reinforced with geogrid was higher than the BCIF value of the soil reinforced with surgical mask and followed a close trend.