Eeffect of Curing Time and Curing Stress on Unconfined Compressive Strength of Cement-soil Mixture

Abstract

The new ground improvement techniques, linking to strengthen the weaker soils and to increase the strength characteristics and stiffness of different types of soils, cement stabilization is showed to be very effective. In the cement stabilization, the “curing time” and the “curing stress” are important factors but inadequate literature shows the importance of the curing conditions, mainly time. To attain this, unconfined compression tests have been conducted on a type of soil by varying the percentage of cement content from 8 to 12 percentage and check the unconfined compression strength at different curing days like 3, 7, 14, 28 and 56 days separately and also a curing stress of 5kpa is being used along with curing time to check the combined effect of both curing time and curing stress. The results show that the curing time and the curing stress have a significant effect on the unconfined compressive strength and curing time is the dominant factor and, it is found that on the addition of cement content, the engineering properties are also affected. It was found that addition of cement in the soil results in decreases the compressibility of the soil and the mixture become brittle also it will leads to increased unconfined compressive strength when compared to unimproved soils. Also, the unconfined compressive strength of the cement-soil mixture increases with curing time and with vertical confining stress. The existence of fibbers in the cement-soil mixture can significantly improve its ductility which will help in overcome the problem of brittles in the soil.