This study is conducted to investigate the strength and stiffness of clayey soil stabilized with fly ash-based geopolymer for unpaved roads. Two sodium hydroxide concentrations of 6 and 8M and two alkali solution ratios of NaOH:Na2SiO3= 1 and 1.5 were considered. Other factors such as fly ash replacement ratio (by mass), curing period, and curing temperature were held constant at 15%, 48 hours, and 65 C, respectively. The unconfined compressive strength (UCS) and ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) tests were performed to evaluate the mixtures. Outcomes of this study revealed that the strength of the clayey soil could be increased by up to 94%. Additionally, increasing sodium silicate content in the alkali solution increased the solution's activity and yielded higher strength and stiffness. This study confirms the effectiveness of the geopolymer binder for the improvement of soil strength and stiffness.
The earth-fill dams are simple structures which are able to prevent the sliding and overturning because of their self-weight. Due to lack of suitable clay materials, the dams may be designed as zoned core which is composed of three vertical zones contains central impermeable core and two permeable shells on their two sides of the core. Impervious core is used in zoned earth dam to reduce the quantity of seepage through the body of the dam and to relief part of risk of piping and erosion in the downstream side. This study aims to study the soil properties that is used as a core of earth dam through a series of laboratory experiments that were carried out a several soil samples mixed with both lime and silica fume, in order to stabilize the soil. The process of stabilization aims to increase the soil strength and reducing its permeability and compressibility. Test results show that adding lime and silica fume to the soil decreases the permeability of soil with different cases of study, the percentage of decreases in case of standard compaction about (21%-90%) while in modified compaction test the permeability decreases in range (41.7%-91.3%). Also the unconfined compressive strength of the soil increasing significantly in both cases of compaction which were standard and modified. When add the materials, these values were increased in range (76%-90%) for samples from standard compaction test, while it being (0.21%-42%) in modified compaction test.
The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of adding recycled materials such as CKD and RAP to weak cohesive soils, in addition to evaluate the change in the strength of these soils. This study was conducted on soil type MH, and only RAP particles finer than 10 mm were used in preparing the mixtures. 7, 14, and 28 days were selected as curing periods for soil- CKD and soil- CKD- RAP mixtures to obtain the effect of curing periods on soil improvement. The results showed that adding 20% of CKD to the natural soil increased the unconfined compression strength UCS from 0.43 MPa to 2.6 MPa at a 28-day curing period. Also, the results showed that adding 25% of RAP to the soil- 20% CKD mixture increased the UCS value to 5.3 MPa after 28 days of the curing period. The final results showed that the optimum contents of CKD and RAP added to the cohesive soil were 20% and 25%, respectively, while the optimum curing period was 28 days