Improvement of engineering soil properties using non -traditional additives

¹ Building and Construction Eng. Department, University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq
² Highways and Transportation Department, Mustansiriyah University, Baghdad, Iraq

^* Corresponding author: muhannad1978@yahoo.com

Abstract

Laboratory experiments are conducted to evaluate the effect of some non-traditional additives on the engineering properties of clayey soil, which show problematic phenomenon when used as a construction material. The conducted tests covered the influence of these additives on various parameters like consistency limits, compaction characteristics and CBR value. Two nontraditional stabilizers are selected in this study, polymers and phosphoric acid at three different percent which are (1%, 3% and 5%) of the dry soil weight. It is concluded that addition of the polymer to the clayey soil results in a slight increase in plastic limit while the liquid limit is not affected accompanied by a marginal decrease in the dry unit weight while the optimum moisture content remains unaffected. The addition of phosphoric acid to the clayey soil has no effect on its Atterberg limits. In general, it is observed that polymer is found to be ineffective as a stabilizer to improve clayey soils, especially in small amounts of about (3%). The phosphoric acid treated soil gained better improvement for all amounts of additive used. For (3%) acid treated soil the CBR is about (360%) compared to that of untreated soil, for that, it can be concluded that the improvement using phosphoric acid in the clay soils is a promising option and can be applied to solve the geotechnical stabilization problems.