Bio-enzyme stabilized soil as Pavement Subgrade
Serin Issac
Civil Engineering, New Horizon College of Engineering, Bangalore , IN
Keywords: Bioenzyme, Black cotton soil, Atterberg’s limits, California Bearing Ratio
Abstract
The pavements are subjected to premature failures in the form of rutting and fatigue failure. These are mainly attributed to increasing traffic. Also, cost effective roads are very vital for the economic growth of a country. There is an urgent need to identify new materials to improve the road structure and to expand the road network without involving much cost. When poor quality soil such as expansive soil is available at the construction site, the best option is to modify the properties of the soil so that it meets the pavement design requirements economically. This has led to the development of soil stabilization techniques. This study was conducted to stabilize Black Cotton (BC) soil which is highly expansive and undergo significant volume change i.e. swelling and shrinkage due to changes in water content. Stabilizing agent used in the study is Bio-enzyme, which is a natural, nontoxic, non-flammable, noncorrosive liquid enzyme formulated and fermented from vegetable extract, which improves the engineering properties of soil, facilitates higher soil compaction densities and increases stability. The dosage of Bioenzyme are taken as 200ml/m3, 400ml/m3 , 600ml/m3 , 800ml/m3 and 1000ml/m3 in the soil sample and result are analysed from the laboratory tests after a curing period of 7 days. Optimum dosage of Bioenzyme is found out from laboratory tests. The tests which were carried out are the Atterberg’s limits, California Bearing Ratio (CBR) test, Unconfined Compressive strength (UCS) test and compaction test. The test results indicate that bio-enzyme stabilization improves the strength of BC soil up to great extent, which indicate the bearing capacity and the resistance to deformation increases in stabilized soil.
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