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Effect of adding cement and nanocement on mechanical properties of clayey soil

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Abstract

Improving the soil behavior, using additives, has considered by a lot of researchers in geotechnical engineering as one of the effective methods to improve various soil behavior parameters. However, nanomaterials have received less attention in geotechnical engineering despite having unique characteristics and causing fundamental changes when being used in other branches of engineering. The present study investigated the effect of adding cement and nanocement for improving the mechanical behavior of clayey soil. For this purpose, cement and nanocement with the dry soil weights of 1, 2, 3 and 4% were mixed with the clay soil and the Atterberg limits, standard compaction and unconfined compressive strength tests were performed on the samples. The samples were cured by within 42 days. The results showed that with the addition of cement and nanocement, the optimum moisture content, liquid limit and plastic limit increased, while the maximum dry density and plasticity index decreased. Also, as a result of the stabilization with cement and nanocement, the increase in the uniaxial compressive strength was observed about 10 and 12 times more than the unstabilized sample, respectively. It should be noted that the increase in the strength in the samples with stabilized nanocement was higher than that in the cement-containing samples. For example, the uniaxial strength of the unstabilized sample was obtained 200 kPa after 42 days of curing, while with adding 4% of cement and nanocement after 42 days of curing, the UCS of 2113 and 2416 kPa were obtained, respectively.

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Data Availability Statement

This manuscript has associated data in a data repository [Authors' comment: This is a experimental study and no theoretical data. Data is available upon request from the Authors.]

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qazvin, Iran

    Arash Yousefi, Homayoun Jahanian & Mohammad Azadi

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  1. Arash Yousefi
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  2. Homayoun Jahanian
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Correspondence to Homayoun Jahanian.

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Yousefi, A., Jahanian, H. & Azadi, M. Effect of adding cement and nanocement on mechanical properties of clayey soil. Eur. Phys. J. Plus 135, 649 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-020-00639-7

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