Stabilization of a dune sandy soil with steel-slag-based geopolymer and nanosilica

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Graduate Student of Geotechnics, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, I. R. Iran.

2 Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, I. R. Iran.

3 PhD Candidate, Department of Civil Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, I. R. Iran.

Abstract

It is necessary to stabilize the road bed in the areas that have fine-grained sand soil or the so-called dune sand. On the other hand, there is no justification for using traditional methods to do this, considering the advancement of technology and the emergence of new materials that are environmentally friendly. In the past years, the concern of researchers in the field of geotechnics has been to choose the best stabilizing material by testing different materials to determined the possible suitability for this purpose.

Today, geopolymer materials are considered as one of the best environmentally friendly materials due to their availability, reduced consumption of energy resources, and reduced production of greenhouse gases, and on the other hand, with the development of nanotechnology and researchers' understanding of their properties, nanomaterials can also be used in the preparation of geopolymers. be placed In the past, researchers have conducted studies on the stabilization of some types of soils using geopolymeric materials, but the use of geopolymeric materials based on iron slag and in combination with nano silica to stabilize fine sand soil is a subject that has not been studied in the past. This research has been addressed.

This research studies the effect of adding 0-3% of nano-silica to the mixture of sandy soil with 5-20% of geopolymer based on industrial pozzolan obtained from iron smelting furnace slag. In order to achieve the best percentage of preparation of geopolymer mixture, 5-20% alkaline solution with a concentration range of 4-12 M has been used, and the samples have been examined in the processing time of 1-28 days. In this regard, according to the increase of the investigated factors, Taguchi test design optimization method has been used to reduce the number of tests.

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