Optimising Cement Dosage in Ground Improvement and Early Quality Control Schemes

Abstract

Judicious dosage of cement in soft clayey soils is key in reducing waste, time and cost in this growingly environmental conscious modern society. Despite being a well-established technique in ground improvement, studies on the prediction of strength development of cement stabilised soils are often limited to a couple of clay types or site specific. This paper presents an extensive suite of unconfined compressive strength tests of cement-mixed clayey soils over a wide range of mix ratios, curing ages and sand impurities. A strength predictive model encompassing the above variables was developed and validated with several types of clay and cement from different sources. This enables the optimisation of cement dosage to achieve a desirable unconfined compressive strength to satisfy the ground improvement criteria with ease. Quality control schemes using early age strength and portable bender element were also discussed in this paper.