Investigation on performance of expansive soil stabilized with fly ash and nano-SiO2

Abstract

The present paper reported the performance of clayey soil stabilized with fly ash and nano-SiO2by conducting various laboratory experiments. The performance of the stabilized material was studied by performing various geotechnical tests including compaction, consistency limits, unconfined compression strength and California bearing ratio tests. For better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of the samples, experiments like scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive X-ray tests were analyzed. In this study initially, the clayey soil was treated with five different proportions of fly ash, i.e., 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30% by total weight of the dry soil and the optimum value obtained was 20%. Then various percentages of nano-SiO2(i.e., 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 and 2.5%)were mixed with the optimum value of fly ash and the performance of the stabilized soil was investigated. From the laboratory tests, the optimum dosage of fly ash and nano-SiO2 particles obtained was 20% and 1.5% respectively. The experimental results concluded that the use of nano-SiO2in the fly ash treated soil enhances the UCS and CBR value significantly. © 2022