Partial Replacement of Conventional Material with Stabilized Soil in Flexible Pavement Design

Abstract

Due to rapid urbanization and industrialization, the construction of roads increases rapidly for easy and fast transportation. Adequate land is not available everywhere to construct good roads; hence, roads are forcefully built on locally available soil such as loose soil or expansive soil. In this paper, an experimental investigation was carried out on low plastic soil (LPS) to enhance engineering properties by using chemical soil stabilization (fly ash-based geopolymer). The design of flexible pavement thickness was carried out for conventional and stabilized soil material using IITPAVE software as per IRC 37 guidelines. The results show the feasibility of fly ash-based geopolymer significant enhancement of strength were observed in terms of unconfined compressive strength (UCS) for various curing days (0 to 128 days), California bearing ratio (CBR), and Resilient modulus (MR). The microstructural analysis via Scanning Electronic Microscope (SEM) and X-Ray Diffraction Analysis (XRD) was also reveling the formation of geopolymeric gel which leads to the dense matrix to soil mass. The flexible pavement thickness significantly reduces with the application of stabilized low plastic soil.