Abstract
The study of the strength of reconstituted and stabilised soft soils is very important in geotechnical engineering. The soil particles, such as clay, sand, and silt play important roles in determining the behaviour of soils. The behaviour of clay and sand particles are unique; however, the behaviour of silt particles lie in a transitional form between sand and clay. Therefore, this paper seeks to investigate (a) the effect of silt contents on the strength of soft soils; (b) the effect of silt content on the strength of cement-stabilised soft soils; and (c) the microstructure of the soft soil specimens stabilised by cement with varying particle size distribution. A series of tests consisting in consolidated, isotropic undrained (CIU) triaxial tests, unconfined compressive strength (UCS) tests, and scanning electron microscope (SEM) images were conducted in this study to achieve these objectives. In conclusion, the relationship between the silt content and critical state behaviour of soft soils (both clay and silt particles) are proposed. For the cement-stabilised specimens, the unconfined compressive strength increases with the increase in silt content when the cement content is 10%. However, the UCS decreases with the increase in silt content when cement content is 30%. With cement content ranging from 15–25%, the UCS increases at first with the increase of silt content but decreases once the silt content reaches a ‘saturation’ point.
Highlights
Soft soil deposits, such as mine tailings, hydraulic fills, soft estuarine or marine soils exist globally on the planet
A series of triaxial compressive tests were conducted in this study for soft soils with varying silt contents and the effect of silt contents on the strength and critical state behaviours of soft soils were investigated
The empirical equations were proposed to evaluate the effect of silt content on the stress paths of reconstituted soft soils under consolidated isotropic undrained triaxial tests and the critical state parameters
Summary
Soft soil deposits, such as mine tailings, hydraulic fills, soft estuarine or marine soils exist globally on the planet. Many projects, such as the construction of coastal facilities, such as shipyard [17] and quay walls, deep excavation [18,19,20] or foundations for building basements [21,22], road embankments on flood plains [23,24] and tunnelling [25,26,27,28] require infrastructure to be built on areas with widespread soft soil deposits [29,30,31,32]. It is key that the latest understanding of the behaviour of reconstituted and stabilised estuarine soft soil deposits with varying silt contents is developed for future potential, large-scale ground improvement projects
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