Geotechnical Properties of Artificially Produced Soils

The natural structure of the soil formations shows complex features due to its heterogeneous structure. For this reason, soil behavior should be defined clearly according to mechanical and physical parameters. However, sometimes irregularities of soil grains affect the experimental results in terms of shape and structure. In this study, an artificial granular material is produced thanks to three-dimensional printing technology to solve this problem. First, the printing process of five different soil grains is completed with PLA-based filament due to standard sieve openings, after the scanning process is completed with Agisoft Metashape software. In addition, the high plastic silt or sodium polyacrylate gel is added into the granular material mixtures to provide cohesion in the soil structure. Therefore, various soil mixtures are formed and classified in poorly graded or well-graded granular soils in addition to finer content. Then, physical parameters are determined by laboratory experiments such as specific gravity, sieve and hydrometer analysis, and consistency limits. At the same time, mechanical properties are obtained via the shear box test as an internal friction angle and maximum shear stress. After selecting the appropriate parameters in line with the results of experiments, the efficiency of produced samples with different physical forms will be evaluated.