Stabilization of Expansive Soil using Sugarcane Straw Ash

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.

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.

• 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:

• Sand
• Sugarcane straw ash
• Expansive soil
• Furnace

• Soil Stabilization