Abstract
The process of road construction is often accompanied by a large number of excavation work, and most of the excavated soil has poor engineering performance and needs to be transported away. It has the significance of environmental protection and cost saving to treat the excavated soil as pavement materials. The aim of this study is to present laboratory experiments into the mechanical properties, engineering properties, and microstructure of excavated soil stabilized by ordinary Portland cement (OPC) and superabsorbent polymer (SAP). Laboratory experiments were performed to determine unconfined compressive strength (UCS), compactness, durability after wetting and drying cycles, drying shrinkage, and California bearing ratio (CBR). Apart from these, X‐ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used for the microstructure analysis to understand the impact of SAP on cemented excavated soil. It shows that SAP can effectively improve the strength and the compaction of cemented excavated soil with good durability. Although SAP will reduce the CBR value of cemented excavated soil, it still meets the requirements of engineering acceptance. Microscopic analysis shows that SAP absorbs water in the cemented excavated soil and plays a filling role.
Highlights
Excavation works are often encountered in road construction, such as tunnels and pipe gallery excavation
Studies have shown that this process minimizes the disturbance to soil microstructure [28,29,30]. e freeze-dried samples prepared by the above method were coated with gold to induce electrical conductivity for scanning electron microscopy analysis. e samples were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffractometer with copper cathode. e freeze-dried samples were ground into fine powder with scanning speed of 2°/min, scanning range of 5°–90°, and scanning step size of 0.02°. en, the JADE 5.0 software was used for semiqualitative analysis of the results
Results of XRD Tests. e X-ray diffraction patterns of representative schemes and excavated soil at 28 days are shown in Figure 10. e results show that the main minerals in the excavated soil are quartz and clay minerals such as illite, chlorite, kaolinite, and calcite, which are consistent with the results of clay mineral composition studied by other scholars [39, 40]
Summary
Excavation works are often encountered in road construction, such as tunnels and pipe gallery excavation. E UCS of cemented soils increases with the increase of SAP content, and the compressibility of cemented soils decreases with the increase of SAP content [9, 10, 24, 25] It can be known from the existing research results that SAP can absorb a large amount of water in the soil and improve the strength of the soil, but the road performance has not been systematically studied, especially about the durability. Is article aims to use SAP and cement to quickly treat the excavated soil with high water content, so that the excavated soil after the treatment can meet the requirements in strength and terms of compaction and has good durability, so as to achieve the purpose of resource utilization It can be known from the existing research results that SAP can absorb a large amount of water in the soil and improve the strength of the soil, but the road performance has not been systematically studied, especially about the durability. is article aims to use SAP and cement to quickly treat the excavated soil with high water content, so that the excavated soil after the treatment can meet the requirements in strength and terms of compaction and has good durability, so as to achieve the purpose of resource utilization
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