Soil stabilization

About: Soil stabilization is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3161 publications have been published within this topic receiving 48437 citations.

Class F Fly-Ash-Amended Soils as Highway Base Materials

Abstract: Class F fly ash cannot be used alone in soil stabilization applications as it is not self-cementing. An activator such as Portland cement or lime must be added to produce cementitious products often called pozzolan stabilized mixtures. The developed mixture must possess adequate strength and durability, should be easily compacted, and should be environmentally friendly. Roadways have a high potential for large volume use of the fly ash stabilized soils. The main objective of this study is to investigate the use of Class F fly ash amended soil–cement or soil–lime as base layers in highways. A battery of tests were performed on soil–fly ash mixtures prepared with cement and lime as activators. Unconfined compression, California bearing ratio, and resilient modulus tests were conducted. Finally, required base thicknesses were calculated using the laboratory-based strength parameters. Results of the study show that the strength of a mixture is highly dependent on the curing period, compactive energy, cement c...

Long-Term Stability Characteristics of a Lime-Treated Plastic Soil

Abstract: There are several questions that are not well understood with respect to the long-term stability characteristics of lime-treated expansive soils in spite of being used as a conventional technique to improve the properties of expansive soils. This paper examines the long-term stability characteristics of FoCa bentonite soil (FoCa represents the first two letters of the two towns between which this type of soil is excavated: Fourgues and Cahaignes) using 4% lime treatment. The long-term stability characteristics referred to as durability in the paper were interpreted taking into account the influence of wetting–drying and freezing-thawing cycles on key engineering properties which include swelling and strength behavior of both untreated and lime-treated FoCa. In addition, leaching tests were carried out to study the Ca2+ ions and pH concentration changes of the percolating water from both treated and untreated compacted expansive soil specimens analyze the permanence of the clay treatment. Finally, to highl...

Upscaling Effects of Soil Improvement by Microbially Induced Calcite Precipitation by Surface Percolation

Abstract: This study has contributed to the technology of soil stabilization via biocementation based on microbially induced calcite precipitation. The newly described method of in situ soil stabilization by surface percolation to dry soil under free draining environment is tested for its up-scaling potential. Then, 2-m columns of one-dimensional trials indicated that repeated treatments of fine sand ( 0.5 mm) sand columns, allowing strength varying between 850 to 2067 kPa along the entire 2 m depth. Three-dimensional fine sand cementation trials indicated that relatively homogenous cementation in the horizontal direction could be achieved with 80% of cemented sand cementing to a strength between 2 to 2.5 MPa and to a depth of 20 cm. A simple mathematical model elucidated that the cementation depth was dependent on the infiltration rate of the ce...