Effects of Water—Binder Ratio on Strength and Seismic Behavior of Stabilized Soil from Kongshavn, Port of Oslo

Abstract

In many civil engineering problems, soil is stabilized by a combination of binders and water. The success of stabilization is evaluated using seismic tests with measured P-wave velocities. Optimization of process, laboratory testing and data modelling are essential to reduce the costs of the industrial projects. This paper reports the optimized workflow of soil stabilization through evaluated effects from the two factors controlling the development of strength: (1) the ratio between water and binder; (2) the proportions of different binders (cement/slag) were changed experimentally in a mixture of samples to evaluate the strength of soil. The experimental results show an optimal combination of 30% cement and 70% slag with a binder content of 120 kg/m3 and a maximum water binder ratio (w/b) of 5. Such proportions of mixture demonstrated effective soil stabilization both on a pilot test scale and on full scale for industrial works. The correlation between the compressive strength and relative deformation of specimens revealed that strength has the highest values for w/b = 5 and the lowest for w/b = 7. In case of high water content in soil and wet samples, the condition of a w/b ≤ 5 will require a higher amount of binder.