Experimental investigation of tire chips on prevention of desiccation cracks emerging in clayey soils

The existence of a solid foundation layer for ensure the structural integrity is an indispensable requirement. However, in urban areas, solid soil may not be found in the surface of the earth without human control. Therefore, especially in the last five year period, soil improvement methods have emerged because of reduction of the good soil environments. Even if different applications for different target are executed in this improvements method, results such as increasing the shear strength of soil, control of permeability, reduction of plasticity values and sitting of control are obtained. In this study, it focused on the subject of keeping under control cracking tendency of clay layer that is drying process via fiber filaments produced from waste tires. It is known that permeability properties of clayey soil layers that exposed to wetting-drying cycle dramatically lost with the effect of cracking behavior. The main objective of this study was aimed to ensure drying of clay without the cracking with this filament. Experimental studies were carried out with help a special mechanism established in Geotechnical Laboratory of department of Civil Engineering from Aksaray University. The drying process of the Avanos clay material is observed by using near-oriented digital photographing method. The obtained images are subjected to evaluation with an image processing software. As a result of studies, it reached quite effective improvers that the filaments obtained from waste tires in terms of the desiccation of clay without cracking. Also, optimum filament contribution rate as mixing ratio should be at 0.3%.