Study on the Compaction Effect Factors of Lime-treated Loess Highway Embankments

Yuyu Zhang,Wanjun Ye,Zuoren Wang

doi:10.28991/cej-030933

Abstract

This paper presents a study to investigate the effects of water content, lime content and compaction energy on the compaction characteristics of lime-treated loess highway embankments. Laboratory compaction tests were conducted to determine the maximum dry density and optimum water content of loess with different lime Contents (0, 3, 5 and 8%), and to examine the effects of water content, lime content and compaction energy on the value of and . In situ compaction tests were performed to obtain the in situ dry density and the degree of compaction of different lime-treated loess. Experimental embankments with different fill materials (0, 3, 5 and 8% lime treated loess) were compacted by different rollers during in situ tests. The results indicate that increases due to the increase of water content . Once water content exceeds , dry density decreases dramatically. The addition of lime induced the increase of and the decrease of . A higher compaction energy results in a higher value of and a lower value of . The value of achieves it’s maximum value when in situ water content was larger than the value of (+1-2%). The degree of compaction can hardly be achieved to 100% in the field construction of embankments. Higher water content and compaction energy is needed for optimum compaction.

Highlights

Loess is one of the wind deposited soils, which is widely distributed and constitute about 10% of the total land area of the world [1,2,3]
China has a large area of loess soil deposits in the world.The world famous Loess Plateau is located at northwest of China, which occupies more than 6% of the territory of China [4,5,6] (Figure 1)
Loess is widely used as fill materials in the construction of embankments in Loess Plateau area

Summary

Introduction

Loess is one of the wind deposited soils, which is widely distributed and constitute about 10% of the total land area of the world [1,2,3]. With the effect of geostatic stress and additional pressure, the internal structure of loess is collapsed. This phenomena is defined as water collapsibility [6,7,8,9,10]. Because of water collapsibility of loess, it often leads to the non-uniform settlement of loess embankments which responsible for many highway hazards in Loess Plateau area (Figure 2)

Methods

Results

Conclusion