Journals Proceedings

Abstract

Soil improvement techniques have been widely used to enhance the engineering properties of weak soils that do not satisfy construction conditions, mainly in terms of bearing capacity. In our case, a weak soil classified as Lean Clay with Sand (AASHTO classification system) was improved adding Lime with different percentages in terms of weight of the dry soil. In order to assess the level of achieved improvement, the various samples, with 2, 4, and 6% added Lime was tested and assessed in comparison to the reference soil, i.e. disturbed with no addition of Lime. The sieve analysis, the Atterberg limit, the chemical analyses, i.e. Sulphate, Chloride contents and PH value, are carried out. The fourth sample with 6% added Lime illustrated the best results. On the one hand, based on the sieve analysis, the original soil classified as A-6, indicating very weak soil, was improved to A-1-b class that represents well-graded sand, which indicates an excellent soil. On the other hand, the more the added Lime, the lower the resulted water content, liquid limit, and plastic limit, where the 0% added Lime sample is mutually compared with the 6% added Lime one. The water content lost 80.43% of its measured values, dropping from 8.79% to 1.72%. While, the liquid limit has dropped 20% between the original and 4% added Lime sample, the behavior has completely changed for the fourth sample that became non-liquid. Similarly, the plastic limit almost dropped 14% between the 0% and 4% added Lime samples, the behavior has utterly changed to be non-liquid for the 6% added Lime sample.