Mitigating Metastability of Calcareous Soil Using a Sodium Silicate Solution
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15225663Keywords:
Metastable soils, Calcareous, Sodium silicateAbstract
Metastable soils have continued to be a bane to civil engineering causing infrastructural damages hosted on them and resulting in both economic and lives losses. To mitigate metastability or collapsibility of a calcareous clayey soil, a suitable sodium silicate solution was formulated under a rigorous process in a preliminary investigation to ascertain an optimal solution by altering silica/sodium ratios and concentrations. However, treatment was unsuccessful for samples containing greater than 12 % calcite content. The optimal solution was then applied in the main study, to treat samples by impregnation of pre-formed oedometer specimens. Impregnation (a non-destructive means of treatment) was preferred to benefit from the inherent structural bonding of samples. Oedometer specimens treated were basically heat-cured (45 to 50 0C) for twenty-four hours as informed by the preliminary study. Collapse potential was estimated by the percentage reduction in height of a specimen due to wetting at 300 kPa overburden stress. A 5% acidic solution and distilled water were used as wetting fluids to examine the effect of pore fluid pH on metastability. It was found that at 300 kPa wetting pressure, silicatization (silicate treatment) and heat-curing reduced collapse potential of samples by 70 % to 78 % under acidic solution wetting and 59% to 73% under distilled water wetting. Therefore, it is concluded that a well formulated and optimised sodium silicate solution can mitigate metastable calcareous soils without additives. However, setting of treated samples occurs only after heat-curing.
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