Shear strength and constant rate of strain consolidation behaviour of cement-treated slurry-consolidated soft soil

Abstract

This article focuses on the compressibility and shear strength behavior of cement-treated soft soil at different cement content and curing time. The soil was found to be too soft (SPTN=1) to collect the undid-turbed samples from soil site. Therefore, a pneumatic slurry consolidation setup has been developed in the laboratory to producer molded specimens of soft soil with same in situ density and water content. These representative slurry- consolidate d re moulde d specime ns were tested using unconfined compression(UC) and constant rate of strain (CRS) set-up to evaluate the shear strength and compressibility behavior of soil before and after cement treatment. The coven-tional 1D consolidation set-up (oedometer) was found to be unsuitable to determine the compressibility behavior of cement-treated soft soil due to its long testing duration (~10 days), which caused major discrepancy in compere possibility results of treated soft soil at the chosen curing time. Thus, the CRS set-up has been developed in the laboratory to accelerate the consolidation process for cement-treated soft soil. A wide range of cement contents (2%, 4%, 6% and 8%) and curing periods (1, 3, 7 and 28 days) were explored to study the compressibility and shear strength para-meters of highly compressible soft soil with respect to the cement content and curing time used for its treatment.