Improvement of expansive soils behavior using fuels

Abstract

Civil engineering structures such as buildings, highways, dams, canals and retaining structures, etc. suffer large-scale damage due volume change of expansive soils. To control the damage and to stabilize such expansive soils are some key challenges in the field of geotechnical engineering. The use of fuels as a soil stabilizer is one of the sustainable, environmental friendly and economical technique to improve the geotechnical properties of expansive soil. The fuels used in this study are crude oil and toluene. Free-swell tests and oedometric tests were carried out to investigate the effectiveness of the fuel content in controlling volume change and increasing soil strength of swelling clay. Moreover, it is observed that the stabilization process mainly involves hydration, cation exchange, flocculation and pozzolanic reactions. These insoluble or low water solubility stabilizers have demonstrated excellent potential for stabilizing low grade materials with swelling properties to support low and high volume structures and roads, and to improve their strength.