Plasticity and compaction characteristics on soft clay stabilised with coal ash and cement

Abstract

This paper aims to determine the compaction and plasticity properties of marine clay stabilized with increasing percentages and different ratios of coal ash with cement. Coal ash with different ratio of bottom ash and fly ash (70:30, 50:50, and 30:70) were prepared at increasing percentages. Limited amount of ordinary Portland cement of 2% was added. The percentage of additives added to the marine clay were 5%, 8%, 10%, 15%, 20% and 25%, respectively. Standard Proctor test was done to determine the compaction characteristics while Atterberg limits was executed to acquire the plasticity characteristics of treated marine clay soil. In terms of plasticity, by increasing the additives percentages, the marine clay approaches CL group of plasticity which shows improvement in soil’s plasticity. For compaction, the values of MDD of treated marine clay is higher while the OMC is lower when compare to untreated. Hence, with the addition of coal ash waste there is improvement in terms of soil’s plasticity for all three ratios whilst for compaction values of treated marine clay does not change significantly between ratios.