Mitigating the Problematic Behaviour of Expansive Soils Using Zycobond and Stone Dust

Expansive Soils are predominantly constituted of hydrophilic clay minerals with swelling and shrinkage properties. The seasonal moisture changes result in the extensive shrink–swell processes causing severe damage to the structure founded on them. Several ways are in use to improve the problematic Expansive Soils, and the most common method is mechanical stabilization. Research revealed that partially replacing problematic soils with waste materials and modifying them mechanically or chemically. Hence, an attempt has been made to use waste material, Stone Dust (SD) and a Binder, Zycobond (ZB) to mitigate the behaviour of problematic Expansive Soil. This paper presents the results and analysis of the various tests conducted on the Expansive Soil before and after blending it with different percentages of Stone Dust and Zycobond. The Expansive Soil is partially replaced with Stone Dust from 0 to 30% with an increment of 5%, and further Zycobond is added with 0–2% with an increment of 0.5% to the optimum mix of Stone Dust and Expansive Soil. The results yielded that Stone Dust and Zycobond blends had effectively improved the problematic behaviour of the Expansive Soil with an optimum of 25% Stone Dust as replacement and 1.5% Zycobond as additive, respectively.