Performance Assessment of Waste Plastic Inclusions on the Strength of Expansive Clays Blended with Vitrified Polish Waste and Lime

Expansive clays will tend to increase in volume as it absorbs water and lessen in volume as water is drawn away. Foundations, building structures, pavements may crack (or) heave as the underlying expansive clays become wet and swell. Thus, for safe design, such weak soils need to be improved before construction. Various techniques are available in practice, and one of these processes of improving the properties weak or soft soils is stabilization. On the other hand, collection of different industrial waste materials is a major concern to the environmentalists. Vitrified polish waste is a waste from ceramic industry and it requires effective disposal, because it contaminates the environments, creates dust in the summer, and endangers agricultural and public health. Today plastic is one of the major toxic pollutants because of its nature of non-biodegradable composed of plastic pollutes and toxic chemicals. During its production and disposal, plastic causes severe damage to the environment. The main importance of the present study is to assess the use of new industrial waste material vitrified polish waste, different waste plastics, and also a binder lime. To understand the performance of stabilized soil, laboratory tests like Atterberg’s limits, compaction parameters, swell and strength parameters were studied. The outcome revealed an encouraging performance and the efficiency of the added materials. The optimum combination was 6% lime, 20% vitrified polish waste, and 1.0% waste plastic inclusions which gave the improvement in strength characteristics. Thus, from this experimental study, a twofold solution was evolved, i.e., resolving the problem of disposal of waste and also improving the strength properties of problematic expansive soil.