Experimental analyses on cellular polymers in different forms for geotechnical applications

Cellular polymers represent an important category among the polymeric materials. Nowadays they experience large applications in different areas (packaging, building, sport, road safety). There is already a widespread geotechnical use of these materials, e.g. for settlements reduction or soil strengthening, especially for existing structures. However, a need of a deeper mechanical properties study is required. Oedometric and triaxial laboratory tests have already been carried out on polyurethane samples obtained from ready-to-be-used slabs (RTBU samples). However, because of a will of polyurethane foam injection inside the soil, an ad-hocprepared foam needs to be prepared and its mechanical properties to be investigated. This paper is therefore aimed to analyse the geotechnical behaviour of the ad-hoc-prepared foam (by testing AHP samples), studying the influence of several factors on the applicability, and comparing the results with the failure tests conducted on RTBU samples.