Soil Stabilisation
Soil Stabilisation for Construction
Stabilisation of clay type soils in construction has been around for thousands of years, examples of Roman Lime stabilisation still exists throughout Europe. The process has been mechanised but the basic principle remains the same.
Lime stabilisation and cement stabilisation are effective and affordable environmental solution for transforming unsuitable or marginal soils into usable construction materials.
Environmental benefits of soil stabilisation are considerable as it reduces both the disposal of material previously classified as "waste" and the import of costly replacement material.
Soil Stabilisation Applications
Stabilisation can be carried out on a wide range of soils from silty gravels through to clays of extremely high plasticity. Generally cohesive clayey soils will react well with lime and higher silt content soils reacting well with cement.
The type and amount of binder used, such as lime, cement, ground granulated blast-furnace slag and pulverised fuel ash, can be varied or used in combination to enable the development of the designer soil to meet the end application needs. This will depend upon factors such as type and make up of the soil, speed of strength gain required, requirements to traffic the works during construction phase and the longevity demands of the completed works.
Benefits of Stabilisation
- Reduce the moisture content of the soil
- Converts waste material into material fit for construction
- Reduces the export and disposal of unsuitable material
- Reduces the need to import material
- Reduces construction time and costs
- Re use excavated materials and contaminated materials as engineered fill, capping and sub-base
- Re use drainage and foundation arisings in place of granular backfill – only suitable when soils have been lime treated
Recycling of the site won materials assists greatly with Site Waste Management Plans
The Eco-warrior® and traditional insitu stabilisation reduce dramatically the requirement to remove materials from site reducing many aspects of environmental impact.