Stabilized Very High–Moisture Dredged Soil: Relative Behavior of Portland-Limestone Cement and Ordinary Portland Cement
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 29, Issue 9
Abstract
Improvement of poor engineering properties for very high–moisture content fine-grained soils (VHMS) is important for several industries, including dredging. This paper focuses on improving engineering properties of VHMS by way of adding low dosages of portland-limestone cement (PLC) such as ASTM C595 Type IL, which is a more sustainable alternative to ordinary portland cement (OPC) such as ASTM C150 Type I. A key goal was to determine if PLC can satisfactorily enhance the properties of lightly cemented (LC) VHMS (LC-VHMS), defined as having 5% or less cement by total mass. This paper focuses exclusively on the behavior of PLC versus OPC by making use of five matched pairs of OPCs and PLCs from four different cement manufacturing facilities. A series of index property, unconfined compression (UC), and unconsolidated undrained (UU) triaxial tests were performed on LC-VHMS samples collected from a dredged disposal facility near the port of Mobile, Alabama. Overall, the results suggested that using PLC in LC-VHMS can provide a sustainable alternative to OPC while leading to comparable engineering properties (5% stronger to 8% weaker overall depending on the test type).
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Acknowledgments
Earlier portions of this work were funded by the National Center for Intermodal Transportation for Economic Competitiveness (NCITEC) through the U.S. Department of Transportation. Argos USA (Steve Wilcox), CEMEX (Bill Goodloe), Holcim (Tim Cost), and Lehigh (Gary Knight) provided cements. The Mobile District of USACE provided dredged soil.
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©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 26, 2016
Accepted: Feb 8, 2017
Published ahead of print: Apr 20, 2017
Published online: Apr 21, 2017
Published in print: Sep 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Sep 21, 2017
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