Abstract
Improving soil engineering properties is an inevitable process before construction on soft soil. Increasing soil strength with chemical stabilizing agents, such as cement, raises environmental concerns. Therefore, sustainable solutions are in high demand. One of the promising solutions is the usage of biopolymers. Five biopolymer types were investigated in this study: Xanthan Gum, Beta 1,3/1,6 Glucan, Guar Gum, Chitosan, and Alginate. Their effect on the soil strength improvement was experimentally investigated by performing unconfined compression, splitting tensile, triaxial, and direct shear tests. All tests were performed with different biopolymer concentrations and curing periods. Additionally, in order to have an insight on the susceptibility to natural elements, plain soil, and biopolymer-treated specimens were exposed to real atmospheric conditions. The extensive experimental results showed that the soil strength tends to increase with the increase of biopolymer concentration and with the curing time. However, it was shown that the soil strength does not considerably change after a certain biopolymer concentration level and curing time. Furthermore, it has been observed that the biopolymer-treated specimens showed better resistance to the influence of the environmental conditions. In general, Xanthan Gum, Guar Gum, and Beta 1,3/1,6 Glucan showed the most dominant effect and potential for the future of sustainable engineering.
Highlights
Improving soil engineering properties is an inevitable process before construction on soft soil
The effect of Xanthan Gum (XG) on soil properties was investigated by various researchers and it was found that XG can considerably increase the compressive and shear strength of soils, especially of soils that contain a significant amount of fine-grained aggregates[14,17,18]
Several samples that were prepared in the same manner were tested in each test, and the average values of the results are presented in this chapter
Summary
Improving soil engineering properties is an inevitable process before construction on soft soil. Five biopolymer types were investigated in this study: Xanthan Gum, Beta 1,3/1,6 Glucan, Guar Gum, Chitosan, and Alginate Their effect on the soil strength improvement was experimentally investigated by performing unconfined compression, splitting tensile, triaxial, and direct shear tests. Biological approaches are emerging in the field of geotechnical engineering and techniques like microbial induced carbonate precipitation (MICP) have shown to be an effective means of effectively improving soil strength and the load-bearing capacity[3,4,5,6,7] These biological approaches require the introduction of a large microbial community and cementation reagents to the soil to create a highly specialized growth environment for the bacteria which may result in the generation of effluent ammonia. Alginate (ALG) is a biopolymer that was extensively used in biomedical industries[24], but its potential for soil improvement has not been well investigated yet
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