Abstract
This paper investigates strength characteristics and stress-strain behaviors of unreinforced and reinforced lightweight soils. Lightweight soil, composed of dredged soil, cement, and air-foam, was reinforced by a waste fishing net, in order to increase its compressive strength. Test specimens were fabricated by various mixing conditions, such as cement content, initial water content, air content, and waste fishing net; then, unconfined compression tests were carried out on these specimens. From the test results, it was shown that reinforced lightweight soil had different behavior after failure, even though it had similar behavior as unreinforced lightweight soil before failure. The test results also showed that stress became constant after peak strength in reinforced lightweight soil, while the stress decreased continuously in unreinforced lightweight soil. It was observed that the strength was increased due to reinforcing effect by the waste fishing net for most cases, except high water content greater than $218\%$. In the case of high water content, a reinforcing effect is negligible, due to slip between waste fishing net and soil particles. In reinforced lightweight soil, secant modulus (E50) was increased, due to the inclusion of waste fishing net.