The Effect of Superabsorbent Polymer on the Resilient and Plastic Strain Behavior of Cemented Soil under Traffic Load.

Di Dai,Hongmin Lin,Gang Li,Lanlan Bai,Jie Peng

doi:10.3390/polym14050929

Abstract

In road construction, a large number of excavated soils need to be treated with stabilizers. The addition of superabsorbent polymer (SAP) can improve the road performance of these stabilized soils. In order to predict roadbed deformation, dynamic triaxial tests were carried out on cemented soil containing SAP to investigate its resilient and plastic strain behavior. The effects of SAP content, cyclic stress ratio, and loading frequency on cement-stabilized soils with SAP were analyzed combined with the number of cycles. This study demonstrates how these influencing factors effect the resilient strain, dynamic elastic modulus, and accumulated plastic strain, which are crucial to better understanding the strain behavior of cement-stabilized soil with SAP. The results show that SAP can significantly improve the brittle failure characteristics and dynamic strength of cement-stabilized soil. Soil with higher SAP content possesses smaller accumulated plastic strain; with the increase in the cyclic stress ratio, the dynamic elastic modulus decreases significantly, whereas the accumulated plastic strain has the opposite trend. In addition, the lower frequency produces larger cumulative axial strain.

Highlights

There is often a large amount of excavated soil to be processed in the construction of roads and tunnels. Most of these excavated soils belong to soft soil
The main purpose of this study is to study the variation of dynamic strain and dynamic elastic modulus of cemented soil and cemented soil with superabsorbent polymer (SAP) under different increasing dynamic stress conditions so as to determine the influence of SAP on the dynamic characteristics of cemented soil under traffic load
Design method and AASHTO-T-292-1997, it is known that the value of the dynamic elastic modulus of subgrade soil should not be less than 10.3 CBR

Summary

Introduction

In order to promote the process of urbanization, vigorously developing urban expressways, urban light rails, and metros have become key infrastructure projects. There is often a large amount of excavated soil to be processed in the construction of roads and tunnels. Most of these excavated soils belong to soft soil. Soft soil is a regional special soil with high water content, a large pore ratio, high compressibility, low permeability, and high sensitivity [1–3]. The widespread distribution of soft soil has become a factor restricting the process of urbanization. The world is in the context of sustainable development, so the reasonable handling of these excavated soils has become an urgent engineering and environmental problem

Objectives

Methods

Results