Influence of Water Content on Mechanical Properties of Improved Clayey Soil Using Steel Slag

Abstract

The use of steel slag fines has been fully investigated and developed as it has similar chemical composition and mineralogy to that of Portland cement. Researchers from home and abroad have done lots of research on steel slag, such as its production, processing, properties, mechanical behavior, cementitious property and so on. This paper describes influence of water content on mechanical properties of improved clayey soil using steel slag and a series of tri-axial compression tests are carried out to study the influence of water content to the admixture of clayey soils and steel slag. Through the test data statistics and analysis, the basic rules of the mechanical properties of these mixed soils were gotten, especially, the optimum steel slag and water content. Through tri-axial compression tests, there are several kinds of specimen failure forms in different conditions of steel slag and water content. The stiffness of steel slag is larger than clayey soil, so the specimen with steel slag would break with an oblique angle whereas the clayey soil specimen would be compressed. Drawn from the experiment, while water content increases, cohesion c increases and internal friction angel φ decreases; however, in general, the maximum stress difference firstly increases, and then decreases. Under the same water content, with the curing period and steel slag content increase, cohesion c increases, internal friction angel φ decreases, however, the stress difference increases. By analyzing the specimen failure forms and the relations of stress difference and axial strain, the relations between stress difference max (σ1 − σ3) and steel slag content and relations between the secant modulus E50 and steel slag content are gotten. It is concluded that when the water content is about 18 % and steel slag content is about 30 %, the stress difference and secant modulus E50 is larger than other cases. Therefore, in soft soil foundation treatment, such steel slag and water content could be chosen in order that the soil strength would be improved. So, judging from the results, the foundation settlement will be reduced by mixing appropriate steel slag and water content.