Abstract
This study aimed to investigate the feasibility of using lime–slag stabilized loess as base-course material by assessing its unconfined compressive strength (UCS). Loess stabilized with various mix ratios were compacted and cured to three, five, seven, and 28 days, respectively, for further strength tests. The effects of binder content, lime-to-slag (L/S) ratio, porosity, and curing time on the UCS of stabilized loess were addressed in detail. The test results show that UCS increases with the increase in binder content or curing time, and it gains strength rapidly within the first seven days of curing. At the same binder content, UCS decreases with the decrease in L/S ratio or porosity. Finally, the correlations of UCS with binder content, porosity, and curing time were derived, which exhibited reasonable correlation coefficients R2 (from 0.86 to 0.97).
Highlights
Loess is mainly distributed in the upper and middle part of China’s Yellow River and the total distribution area is about 630,000 km2, which is around 6.3% of the total land area of China [1,2,3,4]
Given the established facts that higher porosity causes the reduction of unconfined compressive strength (UCS), while increased binder content leads to higher UCS [50,53,63,64], attempts have been made in trying to establish a relationship between UCS and η/Lv, in which η/Lv can be characterized by Equation (3): η=
This research evaluated the feasibility of utilizing lime–slag stabilized loess as sustainable pavement base materials, which is significant for pavement engineering from engineering, economic, and environmental perspectives
Summary
Loess is mainly distributed in the upper and middle part of China’s Yellow River and the total distribution area is about 630,000 km, which is around 6.3% of the total land area of China [1,2,3,4]. The collapsibility of loess may cause problems, such as landslides, soil erosion, ground cracking, and settlement. These hazards will pose great threats to people’s lives and property safety, as well as urban development in the loess area [7]. The utilization of lime–slag mixture to improve the mechanical characteristics of soils is expedient for pavement engineering and some other geotechnical applications [37,38,39,40,41]. With an appropriate proportion of lime and slag used in the soil mixture, the early strength of lime–slag stabilized soil tends to be much higher than that obtained with the addition of lime alone [28,32,42,43,44,45]. Thereafter, the critical parameters slag content, L/S ratio, porosity, and porosity-to-volumetric binder content (S, L/S, η and η/Lv) which are governing the UCS of lime–slag stabilized loess were investigated in detail
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