Stabilization of Expansive Soil using Sugarcane Straw Ash

Expansive soils are very hard when dry, but loses its strength completely in wet condition and these expansive soil poses several problems for civil engineering works like road construction, building construction etc. Soil stabilization in one of the important features for construction because it improves the engineering properties of soil such as strength, durability & stability. In this project, an attempt is made to increase the strength of expansive soils by using sugarcane straw ash.

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1. Project Management with Primavera

In this project, you are going to use sugarcane ash at varying percentage and at varying curing periods to stabilize the soil. After stabilization, you will perform a various geotechnical laboratory test to know which composition results in maximum strength.

Project Description:

1. Sand: Sand is a naturally occurring particle composed mainly of silica and these have a particle size range of 0.0625mm-2mm.
2. Sugarcane straw ash: Sugarcane straw is one of the organic wastes obtained from sugar industry during the process of sugar manufacturing. This ash is easily available and cost-effective in engineering perspective.
3. Expansive soil: It is a clay soil which is prone to large volume change (shrinkage and swelling) according to an increase or decrease in water content. Like in the rainy season it's volume goes on increasing and soil behaves like a liquid and in summer it's very hard and cracks formed on it. So stabilization of this soil is needed before construction.

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Project Implementation:

1. Collect sugarcane straw from the nearest sugar mill and dry it for a week, perform alkali treatment on the dried sugarcane straw.
2. After that burn these straws to prepare ash from it.
3. Then Sieve those through 90micron sieve.
4. Add prepared ash to the expensive soil in various proportion and perform curing operation by varying curing time for each composition.
5. After curing perform various geotechnical laboratory test such as, Modified Proctor Compaction, soaked CBR and Unconfined Strength tests to determine the best composition which yields maximum strength, durability and stability.
6. By using experimental result data plot various graphs for comparing various properties of samples.

Project Brief: After successful completion of the project, you can observe the following things,

• CBR value will increase with an increase in the curing period.
• The swelling properties will decrease with the increase in the percentage of SSA with an increase of curing period.

Software requirements:

Minitab: You can use this software for plotting and comparing your result data.

• Sand
• Sugarcane straw ash
• Expansive soil
• Furnace

• Soil Stabilization

Stabilization of Expansive Soil using Sugarcane Straw Ash