Rheological Properties of Colloidal Silica Grout for Passive Stabilization Against Liquefaction
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 30, Issue 10
Abstract
Passive (site) stabilization is a novel technique for the mitigation of seismic liquefaction which uses low-pressure injection of colloidal silica in the pores of a granular soil. The applicability of colloidal silica as a grout relies on the control of its time-increasing viscosity. Current knowledge depicts silica type, percentage of silica by weight, pH, and salt (ion) normality as the controlling parameters of colloidal silica viscosity, whereas current practice requires case-specific viscosity measurements before in situ injection. This paper presents a set of viscosity measurements of widely different colloidal silica solutions which confirm literature findings and depict temperature as an additional controlling parameter. The wealth of these measurements enables a reliable statistical analysis, which leads to the proposal of a set of charts and equations for the approximate estimation of the time-increasing viscosity of colloidal silica solutions. This information is paramount for the design of the in situ injection process and its importance is demonstrated via indicative one-dimensional injection tests of colloidal silica in sand columns.
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Acknowledgments
This research was cofinanced by the European Union (European Social Fund ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program Education and Lifelong Learning of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF)—Research Funding Program: Thales. Investing in knowledge society through the European Social Fund. All presented measurements were performed at the University of Thessaly, Greece, as part of the PhD work of the first author. The authors thank the reviewers for their insightful comments that improved the quality of the manuscript.
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Published In
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 30 • Issue 10 • October 2018
Copyright
©2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 14, 2017
Accepted: Feb 12, 2018
Published online: Jul 17, 2018
Published in print: Oct 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Dec 17, 2018
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