Subgrade Soil Stabilization Using Chicken Feather Fiber

Anupama Krishnan, Dr. Agnes Anto C

Sub grade soil is an integral part of the road pavement structure as it provides the support to the pavement from beneath. Poor sub grade soil conditions can result in inadequate pavement support and reduce pavement life. Thus soils properties may be improved through the addition of chemical or as stabilization. These additives range from waste products to manufactured materials and include lime, Class C fly ash, Portland cement, cement kiln dust, fibers etc. These additives can be used with a variety of soils to help improve their native engineering properties. The effectiveness of these additives depends on the soil treated and the amount of additive used. of the various pavement layers is very much dependent on the strength of the sub grade soil over which they are going to be laid. The sub grade strength is mostly expressed in terms of (CBR). For an engineer, it’s important to understand the change of sub grade strength. This project is an attempt to understand the strength of sub grade in terms of CBR values. Treatment with chicken feather fiber (CFF) was found to be an option for improvement of soil properties, based on the testing conducted by varying the percent (0.1%, 0.25% and 0.5%) of the feathers. It was found that with the addition of stabilizers i.e. CFF, the C.B.R. Increased up to a certain limit because CFF served as a reinforcement in soil but after that the C.B.R. , due to replacement of soil by CFF.