Effect of initial soil and curing conditions on tensile strength of sandy soil treated with Persian gum

Suitable tensile strength is one of the important parameters in soils subjected to tensile stress. In recent years, biopolymer materials have been widely used to control cracking and increase the tensile strength of soil. In this laboratory study, the tensile strength of sand treated with Persian gum was investigated. For this purpose, the effect of parameters of initial relative dry density of soil, materials mixing method, temperature and humidity of curing place and curing time on the tensile strength of treated samples was evaluated by indirect tensile test. After examining the results, it was found that adding a uniform gum-water solution (including 2% gum and 16% water related to the weight of dry soil) to the dry soil was the best mixing method and the initial relative density of 50% for the soil was the optimal density to obtain the highest tensile strength. Also, there is a direct relationship between the increase in temperature and the decrease in humidity with the increase in tensile strength, so that when the temperature increases from 25 degrees in the room to 50 degrees in an oven and the relative curing humidity environment decreases from seventy to fifteen and then to zero percent, the maximum tensile strength of treated samples increases from 154 to 270 and 442 kPa respectively.