Experimental study on the utilization of industrial and agricultural wastes to stabilize the expansive soil subgrades

Abstract

The growing cost of traditional stabilizing agents and the need for the economical utilization of industrial and agricultural wastes has prompted an investigation into the stabilizing potential of coal ash (CA), groundnut shell ash (GSA) and bagasse ash (BA) in highly expansive soil. In this study an attempt has been made to utilize the industrial and agricultural wastes such as coal ash, groundnut shell ash and bagasse ash as stabilizing agent. The effect of industrial and agricultural wastes under individual and combinations (equal proportion) of mix proportions on certain properties of soil such as Optimum Moisture Content (OMC), maximum dry density (MDD), Unconfined Compressive (UCC) Strength and CBR has been studied. Index properties of natural soil showed that it belongs to CH in the IS classification system, soils under these groups are poor engineering benefit. It has been observed that 30% of C.A and 8% of GSA and B.A for individual mix proportions and 12%C.A + 12%GSA, 16%C.A + 16%B.A and 16%B.A + 16%GSA for the combinations of mix proportions, are the optimum percentage that give the maximum CBR value.