Strength and Microstructural Assessment of Reconstituted and Stabilised Soft Soils with Varying Silt Contents

Autor: Yaxu Liu, Zhuang Liu, Erwin Oh, Dominic Ek Leong Ong
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Geosciences, Vol 11, Iss 8, p 302 (2021)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 11080302
2076-3263
DOI: 10.3390/geosciences11080302
Popis: The study of the strength of reconstituted and stabilised soft soils is very important in geotechnical engineering. The soil particles, such as clay, sand, and silt play important roles in determining the behaviour of soils. The behaviour of clay and sand particles are unique; however, the behaviour of silt particles lie in a transitional form between sand and clay. Therefore, this paper seeks to investigate (a) the effect of silt contents on the strength of soft soils; (b) the effect of silt content on the strength of cement-stabilised soft soils; and (c) the microstructure of the soft soil specimens stabilised by cement with varying particle size distribution. A series of tests consisting in consolidated, isotropic undrained (CIU) triaxial tests, unconfined compressive strength (UCS) tests, and scanning electron microscope (SEM) images were conducted in this study to achieve these objectives. In conclusion, the relationship between the silt content and critical state behaviour of soft soils (both clay and silt particles) are proposed. For the cement-stabilised specimens, the unconfined compressive strength increases with the increase in silt content when the cement content is 10%. However, the UCS decreases with the increase in silt content when cement content is 30%. With cement content ranging from 15–25%, the UCS increases at first with the increase of silt content but decreases once the silt content reaches a ‘saturation’ point.
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