Geotechnical properties of expansive soil treated with silica fume

Abstract EN

Problematic soils such as expansive soil are those clay soils which exhibited significant volume changes as results of soil moisture variation, when a dry mass of clay is allowed to absorb water, the effective size of particles increases and therefore the clay mass swells.

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

A treatment of swelling / shrinkage using silica fume was studied in this work.

The soil selected for the present investigation classified as (CH) according to unified soil classification system with liquid limit = 51 % and plastic limit = 27 %.

Soil specimens were mixed with various percentages of silica fume contents (10 %, 20 %, 25 %, 30 % and 50 %) to determine their effects on geotechnical properties such as Waterberg's limits, compaction, unconfined compression and swelling properties.

The results show that the silica fume played an important role in improving the problem of swelling behavior in expansive soil.

The silica fume decrease liquid limit and changed compaction parameters of expansive soils the moisture content value increased and the maximum dry unit weight values decrease.

Also the silica fume increased unconfined compressive strength, decreased the compressibility and the vertical swelling percentages of clayey soil-silica fume mixtures.