Abstract—Shear Box or direct shear test is widely used in the study of shear strength characteristics. Many researchers done their studies on many aspects of test including effect of shear box sizes. In this study, by implementing the different size of shear box, the shear strength of soft soil sample with modified sand column will be determined. Pulverized fuel ash (PFA) has been selected to improve the mechanical properties of sand column including shear strength. PFA can be classified as hazardous Coal Combustion by-Product (CCP), which can contributes to the environmental pollution. According to (ACAA 2009), USA itself has produced approximately 125.5 million tons per annual of CCP which merely 56 million tons of these waste by-products has been successfully employed in applications and others still remain untreated. Therefore, this study is conducted to implement PFA to solve the issue regarding environmental and at the same time benefit the engineering. 40 samples with various proportion of materials (cement, PFA and sand) were prepared. Shear box tests were performed of two shear box sizes (60 x 60 mm and 300 x 300 mm). The results shown that the shear strength decreases as the size of shear box increase.
 

Index Terms—shear box, PFA, shear strength, ground improvement and sand column

Cite: Shakri M. S., Md. Noor M. J., Nazaruddin A. T., and Hafez M. A., "Effects of Shear Box Size on Shear Strength between Modified Sand-Column (PFA-Sand Mixture) and Soft Soil," International Journal of Structural and Civil Engineering Research, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 13-18, February 2017. doi: 10.18178/ijscer.6.1.13-18