Study on use of chemically stabilized native expansive soil as cohesive non-swelling material

Abstract

The growing infrastructural need requires extensive construction activities in various parts of the world. The problems posed by the expansive soils have caught the attention of the academia and industry at several work sites. Several remedies were suggested by various researchers like replacement of soils, physical, hydraulic & chemical modification of the local problematic soils, inclusion of cushion materials and other reinforcing materials etc. Among the various methods, inclusion of cushion materials under the foundations seemed to be economical and simple. Availability of cohesive non-swelling (CNS) materials to be used as a cushion at some work sites could not be very easy. This study utilizes the local expansive material stabilized with chemical and industrial wastes to prepare a suitable CNS material. Model tank studies with varied thickness of the CNS cushion prepared from this study was placed on the expansive soil were performed to find the efficacy of the CNS material in arresting the heave of the expansive soil. Four cycles of wetting and drying was carried out to check the stability of CNS materials under continuous swelling and shrinking. Results obtained from the model test results indicate that the CNS material prepared from the native expansive soil seem to be an effective CNS material that arrests considerable amount of heave when the thickness of the native CNS material was half of the soil thickness.