Stabilized soil incorporating combinations of rice husk ash, pond ash and cement

Abstract

The paper presents the laboratory study of clayey soil stabilized with Pond ash (PA), Rice husk ash (RHA), cement and their combination used as stabilizers to develop and evaluate the performance of clayey soil. The effect of stabilizer types and dosage on fresh and mechanical properties is evaluated through compaction tests, unconfined compressive strength tests (UCS) and Split tensile strength tests (STS) performed on raw and stabilized soil. In addition SEM (scanning electron microscopy) and XRD (X-ray diffraction) tests were carried out on certain samples in order to study the surface morphological characteristics and hydraulic compounds, which were formed. Specimens were cured for 7, 14 and 28 days after which they were tested for unconfined compression tests and split tensile strength tests. The moisture and density curves indicate that addition of RHA and pond ash results in an increase in optimum moisture content (OMC) and decrease in maximum dry density (MDD). The replacement of clay with 40% PA, 10% RHA and 4% cement increased the strength (UCS and STS) of overall mix in comparison to the mixes where PA and RHA were used individually with cement. The improvement of 336% and 303% in UCS and STS respectively has been achieved with reference to clay only. Developed stabilized soil mixtures have shown satisfactory strength and can be used for low-cost construction to build road infrastructures.