Stabilization of Artificial Organic Soil at Room Temperature Using Blended Lime Zeolite

Abstract

Abstract. Organic content in soil is believed to inhibit formation of reaction products in lime stabilization which resulted in low gain of strength when dealing with organic soils. Zeolite, a kind of pozzolan with high CEC capacity is proposed to be use in this study in order to improve lime stabilization of organic soil. The effectiveness of blended lime zeolite in stabilization of organic soils was investigated by using two types of artificial organic soils with predetermined organic contents. Artificial organic soils were formed by mixing inorganic soil (commercial kaolin) with organic matter (commercial humic acid) at specific ratio. Initial consumption of lime for organic soils was determined in order to determine the minimum percentage of stabilizer required for each soil. Potential influencing factors that might affect the strength such as organic contents, contents of stabilizer, and curing periods were studied. The findings of the study showed that high organic contents and low lime contents resulted in lower gain of strength. However, it is found that slight replacement of lime with zeolite works well with low organic soil at long curing period which resulted in highest strength among all the mixes. Overall, longer curing periods will increase the strength of the soil in the order of 56 days > 28 days > 7 days. Nevertheless, the percentage of strength increment over curing periods is linear with the lime contents, which proved that lime is required for pozzolanic reaction.

Reaction Products of Lime Zeolite Stabilized Kaolin Humic Acid

“…The findings is corresponding well with the study on its strength development which also found that by introducing small quantities of zeolite with lime may increase the strength of the stabilized materials and the strength will not be affected by the reduction ofthe lime content [13]. However, it should be noted that the specimens with no lime added are actually act as control specimen which found that no new reaction product is formed.…”

Fundamentals of soil stabilization

“…In addition, clay minerals are in lesser quantity in the organic soil. Therefore, the organic materials slow down the pozzolanic reaction necessary to attain soil strength [88,89]. The organic soil is characterized by high water with holding capacity that may lead to a reduction in available water for the hydration process.…”

Strength characteristics of artificial organic soils stabilized with copolymer stabilizer

“…The type of organic matter utilized in this study is organic acid which is categorized as humified organic matter while the inorganic soil used in this study is Kaolin grade S300. Some of the physical and chemical properties of Kaolin grade S300 and organic acid were determined by other researchers and are shown in Table 1 [12,13], Table 2 [14] and Table 3 [15], respectively. Based on the USCS classification, kaolin S300 is categorized as low plasticity Silt (SL) which consists of 95% alumina and silicate.…”