Bagasse Ash as an Auxiliary Additive to Lime Stabilization of an Expansive Soil: Strength and Microstructural Investigation

Abstract

The study dealt with the effect of addition of sugarcane bagasse ash (BA) on the strength development of a lime stabilized expansive soil. Unlike previous investigations with combinations of lime and BA, this study compares the effect of lime contents determined by scientifically established procedures and the effect of BA on the stabilization of lime at different proportions with additional microstructural investigations. The minimum lime content required for stabilization known as initial consumption of lime (ICL) was determined using the Eades and Grim pH test as 5.5%. The optimum lime content (OLC) was determined using unconfined compression strength (UCS) tests as 7%. Another lime content less than ICL was randomly adopted as 3%. The three lime contents were mixed with 0.25%, 0.5%, 1%, and 2% BA. UCS samples of dimension 38 mm × 76 mm were prepared at a fixed dry density and moisture content and cured for periods of 2 hours (0 days), 3, 7, 14, and 28 days to study the development of strength and effect of BA. Mineralogical and microstructural analyses were performed on the pulverized UCS samples after failure. The results revealed that the addition of BA increased the immediate, early, and delayed strength of lime stabilized soil further, even when the lime content was lower than ICL. Addition of BA produced maximum immediate, early, and delayed strength gains of 58.3%, 20.7%, and 32.7%, respectively. Higher proportion of BA was required when lime content was above ICL, for maximum strength. Addition of BA resulted in better utilization of quartz in lime-soil reactions leading to formation of CSH and CAH minerals. A dense compact matrix was seen on analyzing the microstructure of the stabilized soil composite.

Strength benefit of sawdust/wood ash amendment in cement stabilization of an expansive soil

“…The increase in strength in stage three may have been due to the availability of more cement content due to which the pozzolanic reaction was able to proceed for a longer duration, leading to a higher strength gain in stage three. Increase in binder content can result in increase in the strength of the stabilized soil in latter stages of curing as reported in an earlier study for lime stabilized soil [47].…”

“…The importance of early strength is well established with several researchers making it a part of their soil stabilization investigations [34,[40][41][42][43][44][45][46]. Development of early strength plays a crucial role in highway subgrade stabilization when there is a need for rapid opening of the road for traffic [47]. The second major observation is that at higher cement content, higher SDA content is detrimental to strength gain.…”

“…The immediate strength of corresponding combination was used as the control strength for calculating the strength gain with curing and the percentage strength gained in the particular stage was reported. This percentage strength gain analysis with subsequent curing period is based on earlier works [47,50]. Figures 8 and 9 shows the percentage strength gain with subsequent curing periods.…”

Utilization of Cementitious Material from Residual Rice Husk Ash and Lime in Stabilization of Expansive Soil

“…In recent years, as environmental protection issues have drawn increasing attention, scholars have started to use various types of solid wastes as additives for expansive soil stabilization [12], such as fly ash [13], blast furnace slag [14,15], cement kiln dust [16,17], waste foam particle [18], alkali residue [19], and so on. Sometimes, some wastes can also be mixed with cementitious material during stabilization of expansive soil, for example, fly ash and lime [20,21], bagasse ash and lime [22], natural volcanic ash and lime [23], phosphogypsum and lime [24], ground granulated blastfurnace slag and lime [25], iron tailing sands, and calcium carbide slag [26]. ese mixtures can achieve better results than cementitious material alone.…”

Engineering Properties of Fine-Grained Soil Stabilized with Different Waste Materials

“…sahip zayıf zeminlerin çeşitli katkı malzemeler ile stabilizasyonu sıkça kullanılan iyileştirme yöntemlerindendir. Atık malzemelerin zemin iyileştirilmesinde kullanımı atıkların hem ekonomiye kazandırılması hem de çevreye olabilecek zararlı etkilerinin ortadan kaldırılmasına katkı sağlayacağından birçok araştırmacının ilgisini çekmektedir [1][2][3]. Katkı maddeleri olarak kireç, çimento, bitüm gibi malzemelerin yanı sıra, son yirmi yılda uçucu kül, silis dumanı, yüksek fırın cürufu, cam tozu gibi endüstriyel atıkların bu amaç için kullanımı ön plana çıkmaktadır [4][5][6][7].…”