Study on Marine Clay Replaced with Sodium Lignosulfonate and Cement

Abstract

Marine clay is identified as the one with high organic content and as an expansive soil which shrinks and expands rapidly causing damage to foundations. Many stabilizers are used to improve its strength and other engineering properties. This paper presents the modification of modulus of elasticity in terms of E/qu with strain for marine clay stabilized with sodium lignosulfonate and it is compared with cement treated clay. It was observed that for an optimum percentage of lignosulfonate (5%) there has been significant increase in unconfined compressive strength. The variation of E/qu with strain showed that the failure strain of lignosulfonate treated soil is more than that of cement treated clay and thus makes it less brittle. Traditional admixtures such as cement and lime are found to cause brittle nature in soil and also induce toxicity to the soil to a level that vegetation on the land is affected. The usage of lignosulfonate has found to be a solution to this problem. In order to validate the above parameters of lignosulfonate treated soil, electrical conductivity test was conducted. It was observed that for lignosulfonate treated soil the value of electrical conductivity decreased over 7 days curing while cement treated soil showed increase in EC over the curing period of 7 days and remained the same even after 28 day curing. This indicated the presence of unstable compounds in cement treated soil and thus proves that lignosulfonate treated soil are non-toxic and less brittle.