The effect of grain size of ground glass particles on the strength of green stabilized sand

Abstract

Regular soil improvement techniques customarily involve the use of ordinary Portland cement (OPC) despite the environmental issues related to the production process of such material. Hence, the establishment of alternative binders through the use of industrial and/or urban waste might be an option to overcome part of those problems. Thus, present research evaluates the strength of a quartz sand stabilized with a binder composed by ground glass powder (having granulometries) and carbide lime. For this, a 2k factorial design method was employed in order to define the experimental runs in which the effect of the following variables was assessed: dry unit weight, curing period, amount of carbide lime, ground glass content and ground glass milling granulometry. The results have shown the great influence exerted by the dry unit weight, the amount of ground glass powder and the curing period. The effects of ground glass granulometry and carbide lime were, as well, statistically significant. Moreover, the results were correlated to the poros-ity/binder index (η/Biv) in which great R2 coefficients were obtained. In general, the pro-posed binder showed to be effective for soil stabilization purposes, especially if finer ground glass powders are employed.