Effect of Various Proportions of Rice Husk Powder on Swelling Soil from New Cairo City, Egypt

Abstract

Swelling soil leads to many types of constructional damages, deformations, and failures in the constructions’ roads, shoulders, and foundations. Depending on the amount of swell, they can be insignificant, moderate, or massive. This paper presents a method for swelling soil stabilization by adding rice husk powder (RHP) in variable percentages of 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 by weight of dry soil. The properties of swelling soil stabilization were investigated by various lab tests such as consistency limits (plastic limit, liquid limit, and plasticity index), swelling potential, swelling pressure, free swelling, and free swell index. The swelling soil was also mineralogically examined using X‐ray diffraction of clay mineralogy. This stabilization reduced the plasticity from 56% (extremely high plasticity) to 4.5% (low plasticity). Swelling potential (S) and swelling pressure (SP) decreased by 48% to 45.5, 44.7, and 34.6%, from 1003 kN/m2 to 800, 653, and 489 kN/m2 for the partial replacement of the soil by 5%, 10%, and 15% RHP, respectively. The results show that the present approach is very efficient for improving the swelling soil properties and that the optimal amount of added RHP of the swelling soil is 15%. It will also be a database aimed at reducing construction risks in the future.