Abstract: Many civil engineering structures constructed on problematic soils like soft soil, swelling soil etc. faces a risk of failure due to insufficient bearing capacity and excessive settlement. Soft soils are typically replaced by some strong materials like crushed rock, hard soils etc. or treated with other cementing material for better engineering properties. High cost and negative environmental effects of traditional stabilizers like lime and cement etc. and the problem of disposal management of agriculture industrial wastes require the investigation of the potential use of agriculture industrial waste in the stabilization of these problematic soils that replaces the use of the traditional stabilizer in a project partially or completely. In this paper one dimensional compressive behavior (UCS) of the soft soil stabilized with sugarcane bagasse ash, by-products of sugar mill activated by alkali activator (NaOH & Na2SiO3) has been presented by performing laboratory tests at various proportion of bagasse ash content (15%, 25%, 35% of total solid mass), concentration of alkali (8M, 10M & 12M) and activator/alkali ratio (0.25, 0.45 & 0.65) at different curing periods (7, 14, 28 & 56 days). Test results showed a high reactivity of alkali-activated binder promoting the strength development. UCS tests showed that maximum strength of 0.41 MPa is obtained for AB-25-12-0.25 mixture which is 1.78 times and 78.3% higher than raw soil at 7 days curing. Likewise 0.51 MPa for AB-25-12-0.25 mixture which is 1.89 times and 88.9%, 0.56 MPa for AB-25-12-0.45 mixture which is 1.93 times and 93.1% and 0.59 MPa for AB-25-10-0.65 mixture which is 1.97 times and 96.7% higher than raw soil at 14, 28 and 56 days curing respectively. The optimum bagasse ash content for soil stabilization is found to be 25% of total solids.
Keywords: Soft soil, sugarcane bagasse ash, alkali activator, stabilization, UCS.
Title: Soft Soil Stabilization with Alkali Activated Sugarcane Bagasse Ash
Author: Jeevan Rana Magar, Dr. Indra Prasad Acharya
International Journal of Civil and Structural Engineering Research
ISSN 2348-7607 (Online)
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