Measuring the effects of styrene butadiene copolymer latex-Portland cement additives on properties of stabilized soil-aggregate base

Abstract

The fundamental objective of this research is to study the behavior and properties of the traditional and non-traditional additives and to characterize the cementitious stabilized base layer. This research presents experimental results on the improvement of short-term road base performance by the addition of carboxylated styrene butadiene emulsion (Tylac® 4190); Portland cement and Tylac® 4190-Portland cement mixture. To evaluate the short-term performance, the specimens were molded, cured for 7, 28, and 60 days, and subjected to different stress sequences to study the unconfined compressive strength (UCS), indirect tensile strength (ITS), indirect tensile resilient modulus (ITRM), flexural strength (FS) and un-soaked California bearing ratio (U-CBR). The results indicate that the additives improved the strength and the stiffness of the specimens, which has been found to be an important quality indicator of mechanical properties of road base. The flexural strength tests showed that the addition of a 4% Portland cement–8% Tylac® 4190 mixture resulted in improvement of 81.5% of modulus of rupture as compared to the sample with 4% cement. Therefore, this research nominates a new polymer additive having outstanding engineering properties.