Macro and Micro Level Investigation of Strength Enhancement of Expansive Soil Stabilized with Lime and Cement using Stone Dust as Additive
P. Samatha Chowdary1, M. Rama Rao2

1P. Samatha Chowdary, Department of Civil Engineering, R.V.R & J.C College of Engineering, Guntur (A.P), India.
2Dr. M. Rama Rao, Department of Civil Engineering, R.V.R & J.C College of Engineering, Guntur (A.P), India.
Manuscript received on 03 May 2019 | Revised Manuscript received on 15 May 2019 | Manuscript Published on 28 May 2019 | PP: 692-699 | Volume-7 Issue-6C2 April 2019 | Retrieval Number: F11280476C219/2019©BEIESP
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Abstract: Subgrade is an integral part of pavement and supports from beneath. This layer’s properties are very important for the design of pavement and there is every chance of damage in a shorter period due to poor quality of the soil. Most of the rural areas of Deccan plateau covering entire Maharashtra, Gujarat, Central & Western Madhya Pradesh, and Southern part of Andhra Pradesh possess subgrade made of expansive soil. Experience has shown that pavements built on these soils often require costly procedures for making it vulnerable to be used as subgrade. In addition to this unfavourable economic condition to adopt high cost technology in subgrade treatment of rural roads becomes mostly non vulnerable, there by leaving rural roads with potholes requiring treatment after every season. Waste materials such as stone dust nowadays are posing a great environmental problem while being disposed into the air & water and onto the land. But, when these materials are properly utilized in making road pavements especially in subgrade would greatly help the society to have a better and pleasant environment. In this paper an attempt has been made to develop a low cost subgrade enhancement technique by using stone dust (Waste from stone milling industry) along with cement and lime separately. California Bearing Ratio test and Unconfined Strength tests were done on Soil-Lime -Stone Dust and Soil-Cement-Stone Dust mixes. It was observed that, as the percentage of stone dust increases the California Bearing Ratio (CBR) and Unconfined compressive strength (UCS) values also increase until a particular value and then decrease. Index properties, Atterberg limits for all the mixes stated above were studied. The results were on par with the CBR and UCS tests. Cementing bonds observed in Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) Analysis also strengthened the results obtained in UCS and CBR.
Keywords: Atterberg Limits, CBR, pH, SEM, Soil Stabilization, UCS, Waste Material.
Scope of the Article: Soil-Structure Interaction