Empirical relationship between strength and liquidity index of cement stabilized kaolin

Abstract

This paper presents the correlation between Liquidity Index (LI) and Unconfined Compressive Strength (UCS) of stabilized kaolin for subgrade application. In this study, 9- samples of soil cement were prepared under various of cement and moisture content and cured for 7-days. Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) of 7% and 13% of soil weight is added to the soil and various of moisture content is used based on the Optimum Moisture Content (OMC) value from the compaction test (0.9, 1.0 and 1.1 from OMC) in order to study the effect of the moisture content on the compaction characteristic and compressive strength. The result from the compaction test shows that the highest and optimum maximum dry density (MDD) was obtained from 7% of cement. The unconfined compressive strength increases as the cement content increases. Based on the LI and UCS relationship, the strength reached a minimum value of subgrade design strength for low volume road (0.8MPa) when the range of the LI is between - 0.46 to -0.39 at 7% cement content.