Selection of Physical and Chemical Properties of Natural Fibers for Predicting Soil Reinforcement

In this chapter, the physical and chemical properties of natural fibers (i.e., natural moisture content, specific gravity, breaking tensile strength, breaking strain, cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin and ash) were examined for their influences in the soil reinforcement. A total of 11 factors including soil moisture content, soil density and fiber percentage were evaluated by using the Bayesian nonparametric general regression (BNGR) method. The robustness of the BNGR algorithm was validated using k-fold cross-validation. A parametric study was carried out to unveil the effects of these input variables. The results indicated that a higher fiber percentage or larger soil density induces higher reinforcement effect. Besides, the cellulose in a natural fiber is found to have a significant effect on the unconfined compressive strength (UCS) followed by the ash. With respect to the physical properties, the breaking strain is found to be highly correlated with the UCS, while the effects of fiber natural moisture content, specific gravity and breaking tensile strength are less significant parameters.