Soft soil is widely distributed in Vietnam, especially in the coastal area. In engineering practice, soft soil cannot be used to build any construction and needs to be improved or treated before building construction. In addition, Vietnam has many pig-iron or thermal power plants, which annually produce a huge amount of granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS). Thus, the use of this material for soft soil improvement needs to be considered. This paper presents experimental results on the unconfined compressive strength (UCS) of three Vietnam’s soft soils treated with Portland cement and Portland cement with ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS). Binder dosage used in this study is 250, 300, and 350 kg/m3 with the three different water/cement ratios of 0.8, 0.9, and 1.0, respectively. The research results showed that the UCS of soil-cement mixtures depends on soil type, water/cement ratio, cement type, and binder content. Accordingly, the unconfined compressive strength increased with the increase of binder contents, the decrease of the natural water content of soft soil, water/cement ratios, and clay content. The highest value of UCS of treated soils was found for the soil at Site II with the Portland cement content, cement GGBFS, and water/cement ratio of 873 kg/m3, 2355 kg/m3, and 0.8, respectively. Besides, for all the three soils and two binder types, the water/cement ratio of 0.8 was found to be suitable to reach the highest UCS values of treated soil. The research results also showed that the UCS of treated soil with cement GGBFS was higher than that of treated soil with Portland cement. This indicated the effectiveness of the use of Portland cement with GGBFS in soft soil improvement. There is great potential for reducing the environmental problems regarding the waste materials from pig-iron plants in Vietnam and the construction cost as well.
The measured gross alpha and gross beta activities in the edible muscle tissues of eleven selected marine species along the coast of North Vietnam varied from 10.2 ± 1.5 to 73.2 ± 8.1 Bq/kg (wwt) and from 10.6 ± 0.4 to 68.8 ± 2.8 Bq/kg (wwt), respectively. The lowest gross alpha activity was recorded for bigfin reef squid (Sepioteuthis lessoniana) as a result of its carnivorous diet, and the highest alpha activity was noted for blood cockle (Anadara granosa) as a result of its omnivorous diet. However, the gross beta activities in both carnivorous and omnivorous species were similar. The highest and lowest gross beta activities were observed for narrow-barred Spanish mackerel (Scomberomorus commerson) and for bigfin reef squid and squid (Teuthida), respectively. All three aforementioned species have carnivorous diets. The calculated annual committed effective dose resulting from the consumption of 25 kg of muscle tissue per year varied from 192 to 1375 μS with an average of 689 μS.
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