Influences of Activity Index on Mechanical and Microstructural Characteristics of Carbonated Reactive Magnesia-Admixed Silty Soil
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 29, Issue 5
Abstract
Carbonated reactive magnesia (MgO)-admixed soil is employed for stabilizing soft soil through absorbing gaseous , which is an innovative and sustainable technique recently developed in the realm of ground improvement. With this in view, a systematic study that targets the influence of the MgO activity index () on mechanical and microstructural characteristics of carbonated silty soil with different ratios of initial water content to MgO content (represented as ) is initiated in this paper. In this context, the mechanical properties are investigated through unconfined compression tests, and the microstructural properties are obtained from X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, thermogravimetry, and mercury intrusion porosimetry analyses. The results demonstrate that and are the two crucial factors controlling the mechanical and microstructural characteristics of carbonated MgO-admixed soils. A simplified equation with combination of and is proposed for accurately predicting the unconfined compressive strength of carbonated MgO-admixed soils. The analyses of microstructural characteristics indicate that dypingite or hydromagnesite and plentiful crystalline nesquehonite play an important role in reducing the pore volume, and the latter is the primary micromechanistic reason for the strength gain of the carbonated MgO-admixed soils.
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Acknowledgments
This research is financially supported by the NSFC (51279032, 41330641, 51278100, and 41472258), the “Twelfth Five-Year” National Technology Support Program (2012BAJ01B02-01), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK2012022), and Project (KYLX_0147) supported by Graduate Student Scientific Research Innovation Projects of Jiangsu Province.
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Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 29 • Issue 5 • May 2017
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©2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 14, 2015
Accepted: Aug 16, 2016
Published online: Nov 23, 2016
Discussion open until: Apr 23, 2017
Published in print: May 1, 2017
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