Suitability of Industrial Waste Admixed Expansive Clays for Geotechnical Engineering Applications

Because of rapid industrialization and urbanization in developing countries like India, the disposal of solid wastes on land is becoming increasingly more. Considering the beneficial properties of these wastes, they may be utilized for many civil engineering applications, especially situations in which there is a scarcity of resource materials. Problematic soils are those having low bearing capacity, high compressibility, high swelling/shrinkage nature, and as such, they are not suitable for any geotechnical application. In order to overcome the disposal problem of solid waste on one side and stabilization of expansive clay on other side, experiments were conducted on expansive clays with different percentages of quarry dust (QD), marble powder waste (MPW), copper slag (CS), blast furnace slag (BFS), and tannery sludge (TS). Results revealed that the plasticity characteristics and percentage swell of clays decreased drastically with percentage of all wastes, except tannery sludge waste. The UCC strength progressively increased with the percentage of all wastes, except tannery sludge. The order of reduction in swell and increment of strength is CS > BFS > QD  > MPW. Modifications in soils are attributed to the pozzolanic component present in the waste.