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Enhancement in Shear Strength Characteristics of Soft Soil by Using Nanomaterials

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Sustainable Environment and Infrastructure

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering ((LNCE,volume 90))

Abstract

Soil being particulate system, encompasses a wide variety of particles, which has made it one of the most complicated natural materials to be modeled. Among soils, soft soil deposits pose challenging problems to geotechnical engineers for the assessment of reliable behavior of these soils to be used either as a foundation medium or construction material. For chemical stabilization of soils, there are numerous chemical additives such as polymers, cement, and other compounds available for treatment of soft soils, however, nanomaterials, including Nano-Alumina and Nano-Silica have attracted great interest among researchers. Unlike other traditional and non-traditional additives, nano additives are used directly with the soil or being an additive for the stabilization of marginal soil deposits. In this study, nanometric additives have been chosen to investigate their influence on strength behavior of clayey soil. Soil samples from three locations were collected and characterized in the laboratory. Also, SEM and XRD tests were carried out to identify the underlying mechanisms of Nanomaterials. Based on basic geotechnical investigations, the soil samples from two locations were selected for treatment using Nanometric additives of Al2O3 and SiO2 at varying percentages of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0%. The test results revealed that the unconfined compressive strength increased significantly with increasing Nano additives. The addition of these nanoparticles increases sample’s reactivity even at an early age and subsequently, compressive strength is increased. Therefore, the main goal of this study was to stabilize soft soil deposits for its bulk utilization in various geotechnical applications for sustainable environment.

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Acknowledgments

The investigation reported in this paper forms part of research work at, National Institute of Technology, Srinagar. Thanks are due to the institute administration for providing the necessary facilities for carrying out this work and Nano Research Lab, Jharkhand for providing the nanomaterials in time for our research work.

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Correspondence to B. A. Mir .

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Mir, B.A., Hariprasad Reddy, S. (2021). Enhancement in Shear Strength Characteristics of Soft Soil by Using Nanomaterials. In: Reddy, K.R., Agnihotri, A.K., Yukselen-Aksoy, Y., Dubey, B.K., Bansal, A. (eds) Sustainable Environment and Infrastructure. Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, vol 90. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51354-2_39

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51354-2_39

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