Unconfined compressive strength and microstructure of clay soil stabilised with biomass silica

Abstract

This study presents the Unconfined Compressive Strength (UCS) and microstructure of clay soil stabilized with locally made Biomass Silica (BS) in the form of SH-85. Since the construction of highway on soft soil raises many problems due to its low strength, understanding about the basic characteristics of soft clay and mixed with BS, play important role for improving the strength of the soft clay. The study carried out had the specific objectives to determine engineering properties of soft clay, to investigate the UCS of soft clay treated with BS and to analyze microstructure of the soft soil treated by BS with respect to various curing periods. In this study, 30 samples of clay soil were prepared under various curing periods (0, 7, 14 and 28 days) and mixed with BS at various percentages (5%, 7% and 9%). The test results show that BS can increase the strength of the clay soil. The 9% BS treated sample for 7 days curing time achieved UCS of 710 kPa. This was approximately 6 times greater than that of untreated soil strength. The highest strength was 1216 kPa at 28 days curing for soil mixed with 9% BS. The images of Scanning Electron Microscopic show that the voids of the clay would filled by the new component resulted by the reaction of BS stabilizer with the natural clay samples. This led to a continuous soil fabric resulting with stronger and denser soil.