Improvement of Geotechnical Properties of Lateritic Soil using Quarry Dust and Lime

Abstract

Most of the rural roads are not covered by a wearing layer and sub-base is the topmost layer, hence it should be strong enough to take the load of the vehicles and not wear off due to bad weather conditions. Soil is the basic foundation of all civil engineering systems. Soil must withstand all loads without failure. In some areas, soil may be soft that cannot withstand all types of loads. Soil stabilization is required in such situations. There are different soil stabilization methods are available in the literatures. But the chemical composition of the soil is adversely affected by some approaches such as chemical stabilization. The quarry dust and lime were mixed with locally available lateritic soil to examine the improvement in the geotechnical properties in developing better subgrades for rural roads. This study presents the influence of lime, in the range of 0-5% with crusher dust blended lateritic soil. However, 4% lime addition can be observed as lime fixation point which can provide substantial increase in the workability of the soils and improved strength. Thus the properties of lateritic soil can be improved and hence locally available soil can be used as subgrade in rural road construction.