Stabilization of Red Soil Using Blast Furnace slag

Abstract

Now a days, a large acres of land is occupied by industrial waste. It not only creates land problem but also creates environmental problems. In order to utilise the industrial waste, an attempt is made to stabilise the red soil by adding blast furnace slag. This project work aims to evaluate the effect of addition of 0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% blast furnace slag in order to stabilize the red soil and to verify its suitability to be used as a construction material for road, embankment and structural fills. The blast furnace slag is collected from Rourkela Steel Plant and the red soil is collected from the campus of National Institute of Technology Rourkela for evaluating its suitability as a construction material for various geotechnical works. Its consistency properties, compaction properties, and strength parameter are tested. In this project the effects of addition of blast furnace slag is investigated and is compared with that of the virgin red soil. The overall testing program was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, the physical, and chemical engineering properties of the red soil samples were studied by conducting Hydrometer analysis, Light compaction test and UCS test. In the second phase of the test program, red soil was mixed with 0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20% of blast furnace slag as percentage of dry weight of red soil. The particular UCS samples were cured for 3, 7, 15 days with varying ambient temperature. Based on the analyses of experimental results the Plasticity Index is decreasing up to a value of 27.6% with addition of 20% of blast furnace slag with red soil. The UCS value is maximum with addition of 10% of blast furnace slag afterwards the UCS value decreases with further addition in blast furnace slag.