Ageing effect on swell, shrinkage and flexural strength of sand and waste marble powder stabilized expansive soil

Abstract

Abstract. Expansive soils in semi-arid climates must be mitigated to minimize potential structural damage to the overlying structures due to swell-shrink behavior caused by climatic changes. The expansive soil in this study was amended by sand which reduced the swell-shrink potential significantly. As a secondary additive, a waste by product of construction industry was selected, marble powder. Recycling this material would minimize its accumulation and covering a large space in landfill areas. In this study, waste material was assessed as a possible partial replacement for sand and due to its high calcite content, curing effect on its cementitious characteristic was also evaluated. It was observed that for mitigating the swell-shrink potential, 10% marble powder by dry mass was the optimum amount which was observed to gain improved characteristics with curing. The flexural strength, however, slightly reduced with marble powder addition, the soil mixture displayed a brittle behavior. Therefore the utilization of this material is recommended to be restricted to soils exposed to lower flexural loads, such as light traffic. The correlation between shrinkage strains and flexural strength parameters suggested herein, could be a potential empirical approach to predict the flexural strength based on shrinkage behavior.

Sustainable Use of Solid Waste as Additives in Soil Stabilization: A State-of-Art Review

“…Mining industries causes environmental pollution by water, air, soil and water. 64) Oncu and Bilsel 35) studied the effect of sand and marble dust (MD) on swell, shrink and flexural strength parameters of soil. MD was used as partial replacement of sand in samples.…”

Assessment for Sustainable Use of Quarry Fines as Pavement Construction Materials: Part I—Description of Basic Quarry Fine Properties

“…It was also found that the partial replacement of cement by granite quarry dust is beneficial in several aspects including good durable behavior, less drying shrinkage and expansion, lower possibility of early-age cracking, while keeping strength properties comparable [23]. When used as stabilizer, quarry waste could improve the properties of soils in terms of better workability, a decrease in optimal water content and an increase in maximum dry unit weight [24,25], better swell and shrinkage properties for expansive soil [26], and satisfactory durability under freeze-thaw cycles [27]. Quarry fines were also employed as an addition to natural soils to improve properties such as grading and compaction characteristics, strength, and to reduce swelling and plasticity [24].…”

“…For structural purposes, there are mainly three types of effective applications utilizing quarry waste. One is to use quarry waste as a substitute for sands/filler in different percentages in concrete [22,30,32,33], and the other is to replace part of cement by the quarry waste to produce concrete [22], or even employ quarry waste as an additive to improve soil properties [23,24,25,26,27]. In other words, it is common to employ quarry waste as an alternative material to reduce the dosage of other materials (more expensive, more in demand, or less environmentally friendly) or as an additive, rather than using quarry waste as a major construction material.…”

“…In other words, it is common to employ quarry waste as an alternative material to reduce the dosage of other materials (more expensive, more in demand, or less environmentally friendly) or as an additive, rather than using quarry waste as a major construction material. In fact, most of the previous research applies less than 50% quarry waste [19,20,21,23,24,25,26,27], and the majority applies 5% to 30% as aggregates/fillers to develop different types of concrete. This might be related to the high requirements for quality and the mechanical properties of concrete materials for adequate structural performance.…”

Assessment for Sustainable Use of Quarry Fines as Pavement Construction Materials: Part II-Stabilization and Characterization of Quarry Fine Materials

“…At present, the most common application area of quarry fines in Finland is to use it as the uppermost unbound layer of yards, fields and low-volume streets [1]. Some research has also found that quarry fines could be used as an alternative to Portland cement for concrete [2], a stabilizer/additive to improve soil properties [2,3,4,5,6], and a substitute to sands/filler in concrete [7,8,9,10]. However, compared with the under-utilized portion, the quarry fine that has found its application in practice is still far from adequate.…”