The measurement of interface friction between a jute geotextile and a clay slurry

Abstract

The layered clay-sand scheme proposed by Lee et al. has been shown to be feasible for land reclamation in sand-scarce country. Although the layered clay-sand scheme has great potential as a means of saving sand fill in replacing scarce sand by cheap marine clay available in the surrounding seabed, practical problems exist in its implementation. The most difficult part of the scheme is to form thin sand-drainage layers on top of a very soft clay slurry without losing too much sand material into the clay. This can only be accomplished by careful spreading of thin sand layers (of less than 5 cm) on the clay slurry when it has reached a water content below 200%. From the process of self-weight sedimentation and consolidation above, it takes a very long time to achieve such consistency from an initial deposition water content of 500-600%. It is therefore necessary to investigate the use of a low-cost geotextile (such as a jute fabric, which can support the formation of thin sand layers on top of the clay slurry at higher water content, to shorten the waiting period before sand-spreading, as well as to save sand fill by reducing sand penetration into the clay slurry. It is proposed that the jute fabric is placed on top of the clay slurry before careful sand-spreading. To aid the use of jute fabric for this purpose, an investigation is carried out to determine the interface friction between a jute geotextile and a clay slurry at various water contents by means of a vertical-plate-penetration test that is described in this paper. © 1993.