Stabilization of Expansive Soil using Sugarcane Straw Ash (SCSA)

Abstract

India is having around 50 million hectares of land which are covered with expansive soils. These expansive soils are very hard when dry, but loses its strength completely in wet condition. These expansive soils poses several problems for the civil engineers. Various methods are adopted to improve the engineering characteristics of expansive soils. Soil stabilization is one of the important features for construction because it improves the engineering properties of soil such as strength, durability and volume stability. In this paper, sugarcane straw ash is used at varying percentage and at varying curing periods to stabilize the soil. Various geotechnical laboratory tests like Unconfined Compression Test (UCS), California Bearing Test (CBR) and Free Swelling Index Test (FSI) were carried by varying the percentage of sugarcane straw ash (5%, 10% and 15%) at varying curing periods (3, 5 and 7 days). It is found that 10 % increase in the percentage of sugarcane straw ash increases the UCS and CBR value with increasing curing periods.

Keywords:Expansive Soil, Soil Stabilization, Sugar cane Straw Ash, Durability