Abstract
EXPANSIVE SOILS: PROBLEMS AND REMEDIAL MEASURES
Prof. B.A. Mir*
ABSTRACT
Expansive soil is a worldwide problematic soil that causes extensive damage to civil engineering structures. Expansive soils of India are highly argillaceous, very fine-grained, possesses unique capacity to hold water, swell when wetted and exert high swelling pressures when confined. Various problems associated with these soils are: structural problems through differential movement of the structure resulting in severe damage to the foundations, buildings, roads, retaining walls, canal linings and movement of soils on unstable slopes. On the other hand, in India, nearly 150 million tonnes of fly ash is being generated annually posing dual problem of environmental pollution and difficulty in disposal, which calls for establishing strategies to use the same effectively and efficiently. In this paper, a brief review has been made about possible pre & post construction solutions, and fly ash stabilization of expansive soils has been studied in detail. Test specimens were prepared with expansive soil using a range of fly ash contents (by dry weight of the soil) at 0.95?dmax and Optimum moisture content and subjected to different tests with out and with curing time. Based on favorable results, it is concluded that the fly ash can be successfully used not only as an effective stabilizer, but also as an engineered construction material. Thus the main objective of present study was a two-fold: First, to overcome problems posed by expansive soils by choosing a suitable ground improvement technique and second, to avoid the tremendous environmental problems caused by large scale dumping of fly ash by its economical and environmentally beneficial utilization in various Geotechnical applications.
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