Static and Dynamic Properties of Compacted Soil-Cement Mixtures

Construction over soft clay sites has remained a major challenge all over the world as there are numerous problems associated with such sites such as low foundation support, huge settlement and large deformations during a seismic event. One alternate to construct civil engineering structures on the foundations having weak clays is modifying soils with soil-cement mixtures. The proportion of cement and curing time plays important role in the geotechnical properties of modified soils. The present study investigates the static and dynamic behavior of cement modified clay. Granular Kaolin clay which is commercially available as Hydrite Flat DS with PI=17 was mixed with cement at cement proportions ranging from 2 to 10%. Compacted soil-cement samples were prepared at a water content equal to the corresponding optimum moisture contents of the soil-cement mixtures. These samples were wrapped with plastic sheet and stored in an air tight container for 7 and 14 days. Various laboratory tests such as unconfined compression tests, direct simple shear tests, and cyclic simple shear tests were conducted on the soil-cement mix samples cured for 7 and 14 days. The study results were helpful in determining the unconfined compression strengths, modulus of elasticity, drained and undrained shear strength parameters, pore pressure behavior, stress paths and stress-strain behavior of the cement modified clay under static and cyclic loading conditions.