International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 7, Issue 5, May-2016 18

ISSN 2229-5518

Stabilization of soft clay soil using Fly ash and

Lime stone dust
Anu.K1 Deewash Gurung2 Rupesh Yadav3 Lige Lollen4 Phunstok Namgyal Bhutia5
1 Assistant. Professor, Department of civil engineering,

Abstract— Soft clay soils exhibit high plasticity characteristics, low shear strength properties and high swell shrinkage characteristics. Soft Clay has
particle sizes less than about 0.002mm, it is the finest of all and. even it can only be clearly monitored by using microscopic tools. Foundation settle-
ments are the most emergence problems happened in building constructions on soft clay soil. Fly ash and Lime stone dust are both waste substances
typically an industrial waste which is commonly used for stabilization of soils. The requirement of stabilization is to improve the adequate strength of soil
by adding lime stone dust and fly ash. The objective of stabilizing the soil is to reduce the moisture holding capacity, plasticity to improve stability of soil.
This paper investigates the complete analysis of the improvement of the soil properties and stabilisation using fly ash and lime stone dust. In this study
laboratory experiments were conducted on soft clay soil with replacement by various percentage of fly ash and lime stone dust. The various laboratory
experiments such as compaction test, UCC,Permeability, etc were conducted on both soft clay soil and clay soil mixed with various percentages of fly
ash and lime stone dust. The study has shown that the addition of additives , lime stone dust and fly ash has shown the significant improvement in the
strength and decreased moisture content and stiffness of the soil, more importantly it exhibits greater toughness, durability and stability as compared to
soil alone.

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Keywords: Soft clay, fly ash, lime stone dust, dry density, OMC ,Compaction , UCC, Permeability

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1 INTRODUCTION
Often project sites are located in areas with soft or weak soils. ous laboratory tests like grain size distribution, consistency
Soft soils shows high plasticity characteristics, low shear limits, compaction, unconfined compressive strength and
strength properties and high swell shrinkage characteristics. permeability test were conducted on both the stabilised and
Depending on the nature of the project the design solution un-stabilised soils. The results obtained include reduction in
may involve the expensive option of removal and replacement plasticity properties of the clay, improvement in the dry densi-
of the weak or compressible soils. The replacement option typ- ty and unconfined compressive strength.
ically include use of crushed rock, gravel or lightweight ag-
gregates. Other options involve using ground improvement The main objective of the present project is to study the im-
alternatives such as stone columns, grouting, wick drains and provement in geotechnical properties of stabilised expansive
chemical admixtures such as cement or lime. Among them, soil treated with fly ash and lime stone dust. It includes-
one of the most effective and economical method is to use • To study the basic properties of soft soil, fly ash and
chemical additives. Fly ash is a waste by product from thermal lime stone dust.
power plants. It spread out in thousands hectares of precious • To study the compaction and strength characteristics
land for its disposal and also causing severe health and envi- of both soft soil and stabilized soil.
ronmental hazards. The processing of limestone results in ap- • To study the effect of different amounts of fly ash and
proximately twenty percentage limestone dust (LSD) waste lime stone dust added to clay soil on the geotechnical
and this also require a large area of landfill for the disposal. properties of soft soil.
Therefore it is better to utilise such type of waste materials as • To find out the optimum quantity of fly ash and lime
additives for soil stabilization to protect the environment. The stone dust by weight added to the soft soil where it
main objective of soil stabilization is to improve the strength shows the higher strength and minimal value of
and stability of soil and mainly to lower the construction cost. swell.
This paper analyse the effectiveness of adopting soil- • To analyses the effectiveness of the adopting soil-
stabilisation technique to improve the geotechnical properties stabilization technique in improving the geotechnical
of soft soil. In this paper, fly ash and lime stone dust were properties of soft soil quantitatively.
used as additives for stabilisation to improve the geotechnical
properties of soft clay. An experimental programme was con-
ducted on both soft clay soil and stabilised soil to investigate
the combined effect of lime stone dust & fly ash added at dif-
ferent percentages to soft soil on geotechnical properties. Vari-
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International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 7, Issue 5, May-2016 19
ISSN 2229-5518
2.0 METHODOLOGY
I .Clay soil treated with Fly ash:
Table : 3 Plasticity Characteristics:
The main admixture used in this study is Class C fly ash and Sl. % of fly Liquid Plas- Shrink-
lime stone dust. Experimental programme were carried out on No. ash limit tic age limit
both soft clay and soft clay treated with different proportions limit
of fly ash and lime stone dust to achieve the given objectives of
the present study. Test conducted includes. Specific gravity 1. 0% 78.21 30% 18%
test, Grain size analysis, Atterberg’s limits, compaction test %
,Unconfined Compressive strength (UCC) test and Permea-
bility. 2. 3% 76.4% 32% 19.6%
Untreated Clayey soil:
Table :1 Plasticity characteristics
Sl.NO. Plastic Properties Typical values 3. 6% 72.4% 33% 22.3%

4. 9% 70% 35% 22.9%

1. I.S. classification CI

Compaction characteristics
2. Plastic limit 34.75%
The effect of addition of limestone dust on the compaction
properties (optimum water content and maximum dry unit
3. Liquid limit 78.21% weight) of optimum soil fly ash mix was investigated by con-

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ducting light compaction test. The Standard Proctor curves for
4. Shrinkage limit 6.63% the soil - fly ash - limestone dustmix are shown in Figure 2.
Table 4. shows the maximum dry density and optimum mois-
ture content obtained for different limestone dust percentages.
The shift of the compaction curve to the left and upwards is
Specific Gravity was found to be 2.61
considered an indication of improvement in the compaction
Table: 2 Compaction Characteristics characteristics of the treated soil with respect to the untreated
Sl.NO. Properties Typical val- soil.
Table: 4 Dry density water content
ues
Fly ash Max dry densi- OMC (%)
1 Max Dry Densi- 1.36g/cc
ty ty (g/cc)
3 1.443 28.1
2 Optimum mois- 29.4%
ture content 6 1.46 27.5
9 1.485 26.7
12 1.474 27
14 1.463 27.4

FIG 1: Moisture dry density relationship for clay soil. Fig 2: Moisture- dry density relationship for soil-fly
ash mixture at different fly ash contents

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International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 7, Issue 5, May-2016 20
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Fig3: Variation of maximum dry density with different fly ash

percentage in the soil.
Fig 5: Variation of maximum dry density with different Lime-
stone dust percentage.
II.Clay soil With Lime stone dust.
The OMC and dry density of clay soil with different percent-
III. Combination of clay,lime stone dust and fly ash
age lime stone dust are shown in fig and table.
Table: 5 Compaction Test The maximum dry density and optimum moisture content of
clayey soil stabilised with different % of fly ash and lime stone

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% 0f Max. Dry den- OMC(%)
dust.
lime sity (g/cc)
Table : 6
stone
S.N Fly Lim Max. Dry Optimum
.
. ash e density(g/cc) moisture
3 1.461 28.2
% ston content (%)
4 1.49 27.4
e%
6 1.583 26.3
1. 9 3 1.57 24.3
9 1.61 25.7
2. 9 6 1.63 23.7
10 1.63 24.3
12 1.62 25.1 3. 9 9 1.67 22.3

4. 9 10 1.74 21.4

5. 9 12 1.71 21.9

Fig 4: Moisture- dry density relationship for soil-limestone dust

Mixture at different limestone dust contents Fig 6: water
content dry density relationship

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International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 7, Issue 5, May-2016 21
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D) UNCONFINED COMPRESSION TEST
Table : 7 4. 9 10 0.000145cm/s
S.N Fly ash Lime- strain Stress(
stone kg/cm2 5. 9 12 0.000020cm/s
)
1. 9% 3% 0.194
0.153
2. 9% 6% 0.213 0.172
3. 9% 9% 0.230 0.185
4. 9% 10% 0.263 0.197
5. 9% 12% 0.219 0.178

Fig: 8 permeability of clay soil mixed with various % of FA and

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LSD

3.0 CONCLUSIONS:
During test performance we found that standard proctor test
and Unconfined Compression Test (UCS) are very important
for testing the properties of used soil for the construction pro-
cess. All the results were described above in detail, some con-
clusion were taking out from the study are given below:
1) The dry density of the sample in increases with de-
crease in water content.
Fig:7 Graphical representation of comparison between maxi- 2) Maximum water content during performing Standard
mum stress and maximum strain for Fly ash 9% and proctor Test of soft clayey soil is 29.8% at 1.39 g/cc.
3) Mixing material like lime stone dust and fly ash must
LSD(3%,6%,9%,10% & 12% be available in high potential for this type of soil.
4) The soil stabilised with fly ash only showed maxi-
E) PERMEABILITY TEST:
mum strength of 1.49g/cc at 9% fly ash.
In order to determine the effect of limestone dust on the per- 5) The soil stabilised with lime stone dust only showed
meability of the optimum soil-fly ash mix, falling head perme- maximum strength of 1.40g/cc at 10% lime stone dust.
ability test was conducted and the result shows that there is an 6) Maximum strength of soil 1.71g/cc is from the compo-
decrease in the permeability of the soil. sition of 9% fly ash and 10% lime stone dust.
Table : 8 7) The compressive strength of used mixture increases
for a particular composition after that it goes falling
SN Fly Ash (%) Lime Stone Permeability
down.
Dust(%) 8) For this kind of soil treatment mixing of soil with
1. 9 3 0.00023cm/s right composition is not very easy process and is also
very important process for best performance at low
cost.
2. 9 6 0.00021cm/s

3. 9 9 0.000175cm/s

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International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 7, Issue 5, May-2016 22
ISSN 2229-5518
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of Fly Ash on the Behavior of Expansive Soils: Micro-
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trial Waste Lime”
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