Comparison of the effects of cement, lime and CBR PLUS on reducing the swelling of clay soils

one of the major problems associated with the clay soils is their swelling due to moisture attraction, which results in imposing high pressure on the super structures, and may cause failure or deformation of light structures. One of solutions to mitigate the swelling problem of clay soils is their stabilization using additives. This paper, describes the evaluation of three types of additives on the swelling of two types of clay soils, one with low plasticity index and the other with a high plasticity index. The additives used in this research include two traditional additives, namely cement and lime, and one type of nontraditional stabilizer, namely CBR PLUS nano polymer. These additives were added to the soils in different contents, and the Atterburg limits, and swelling of the soils at different times from 2 to 96 hours after addition of additives were measured. The results show that, the CBR PLUS is more effective in decreasing the swelling of the soil with high plasticity index, with a 15 times reduction in swelling, against 1o times for the lime and cement. For the soil with low plasticity index, he cement is found to be more effective than the lime and CBR PLUS in reducing the swelling. The addition of 7% of cement resulted in 14 times reduction in swelling, against 6 times reduction for the addition of the same content of lime. In addition, it is found that, the CBR PLUS and cement, are, respectively, more effective in reducing the plasticity index of the soil with high and plasticity index.