Ajay Reddy Pisati

Evaluating the Effect of Fines Content on Shear Strength of MICP Treated Infills for Geocells

Abstract

A total of 1.46 billion metric tons of crushed stone valued at $17.8 billion was produced in the United States in 2020, of which 72% was used as construction aggregate for road construction. During the same year, approximately 0.96 billion metric tons of construction sand and gravel worth $9.2 billion were produced, with 21% going for road bases, coverings, and stabilization and 12% going for asphalt concrete aggregate and other bituminous mixtures. This statistic illustrates the need to find alternatives such as readily available on-site materials to minimize the reliance on aggregates. By doing so, the excavated soil will no longer need to be transported to the site from quarries and pits, construction costs will be reduced, environmental impacts will be minimized, and pavement base construction will not require the purchase and hauling of select fill materials or aggregates. In most studies on the use of native soil and quarry fines as pavement base materials, the concern is that they contain more fines than the 10% standard limit set by many agencies. It has been advised that if the fine content in the base material exceeds this limit, the strength and modulus of the pavement will be greatly diminished, which is not recommended. Many researchers have studied soils involving high fines content as an alternative pavement base material by incorporating conventional stabilization techniques such as cement and lime. Considering that all of these methods have disadvantages such as being environmentally unfriendly, economically unfavorable, energy-consuming, and short-lived, a new soil improvement method based on MICP in conjunction with Geocell will be studied on soils involving different fines content.