Rehabilitation of medium expansive soil using cement treatment

Abstract EN

Problematic soils such as swelling / shrinking soil are widespread in the Middle East and worldwide.

This type of soil, upon wetting and drying, cause's severe damage to structures built on such soil.

Rehabilitation of swelling/shrinkage using cement treatment was studied in this work.

Medium expansive soil (12 < PI < 24) was selected for the present investigation.

Soil specimens were mixed with various percentages of cement contents (1 %, 2 %, 3 % and 4 %) and molded to a range of prescribed pre-wetting dry densities and moisture contents.

It was found that 2 % cement content cured for 28 days was sufficient to reduce the free swell percentage for medium expansive soil from as high as 7.4 % to merely 0.4 %.

The potential swell pressure, however, was reduced from a damagingly high value (333 kPa) for the untreated soil to a tolerable value (20 kPa) for the same enhancement conditions.

Swell potential versus time relationship for the natural and stabilized soil could be very accurately represented by a rectangular hyperbolic function.