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Experimental study on static and dynamic characteristics of geopolymer-stabilized coarse-grained soils

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Abstract

Cementitious coarse-grained soils are widely used as filling materials in infrastructure projects such as high-speed railway subgrades, earth dams, and highway bases, due to their excellent strength, stiffness, and stability performances. This study conducted unconfined compression tests on fine-grained soils first to investigate the optimal mixing ratio of the raw material (metakaolin) and alkali activator (composed of quicklime (CaO) and sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3)) for comprising the geopolymer binder. Then, the dynamic characteristics of geopolymer-stabilized coarse-grained soils with a relatively fixed dosage of the geopolymer binder were studied by large-scale dynamic triaxial tests. The influences of rock-block content and confining pressure on the dynamic parameters of the geopolymer-stabilized coarse-grained soils were further discussed. The results indicated that the ideal mixing ratio of metakaolin, CaO, and NaHCO3 for preparing the geopolymer binder was 4:1:1, and their optimal mixing ratio for fine-grained soil stabilization was 15% by the weight of dry soil. The maximum dynamic shear modulus of geopolymer-stabilized coarse-grained soils had an approximately linear relationship with the rock-block content and a nonlinear relationship with the effective confining pressure. With the shear strain being normalized, the dynamic shear modulus ratios of geopolymer-stabilized coarse-grained soils were distributed in a narrow band with low dispersion, while the damping ratio increased with the shear strain and showed a relatively high dispersion in values. The dynamic shear modulus ratio and normalized damping ratio of geopolymer-stabilized coarse-grained soils could be described by functions of the normalized shear strain amplitude. The results of this study could provide a design parameter basis for the application and popularization of similar geopolymer-stabilized coarse-grained soils in engineering practices.

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Data Availability

The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41902282, 51978335), the Science and Technology Planning Project of Jiangsu Province(Grant No. BE2022605), the Science and Technology Development Planning Project of Nanjing, China (Grant No. 202211011), and the State Key Laboratory of Frozen Soil Engineering (Grant No. SKLFSE201809).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Transportation Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, 211816, China

    Shengnian Wang, Xinqun Gao, Kai Zhao & Peiwen Xu

  2. Jiangsu Province Engineering Research Center of Transportation Infrastructure Security Technology, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, 211816, China

    Shengnian Wang & Kai Zhao

  3. State Key Laboratory of Frozen Soil Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Wei Ma

  4. China Design Group Co., Ltd, Nanjing, 210014, China

    Xinqun Gao

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  1. Shengnian Wang
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Correspondence to Kai Zhao.

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Wang, S., Gao, X., Ma, W. et al. Experimental study on static and dynamic characteristics of geopolymer-stabilized coarse-grained soils. Acta Geotech. 19, 717–739 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-023-01876-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-023-01876-7

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