Strength Characterization of Cement Stabilized and Fiber Reinforced Clay–Pond Ash Mixes

This paper presents the experimental results obtained from tests conducted on clayey soil specimen stabilized with pond ash (PA) and cement and reinforced with randomly distributed fibers. The amount of PA and cement were varied from 0–50 and 0–6 % respectively by dry weight of the soil. In order to understand the influence of admixture on the strength properties of clay, compaction tests, unconfined compression tests (UCS), split tensile strength (STS) tests and California bearing ratio tests (CBR) were conducted. In addition scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction tests were carried out on certain samples in order to study the surface morphological characteristics and hydraulic compounds, which were formed. The specimens were tested for their strength behaviour at different curing periods. The obtained results have shown that addition of mixtures leads to a decrease in the maximum dry density and increase in optimum moisture content. The results also indicate that the proposed method is very effective to improve the strength of the clayey soil in terms of UCS, STS and CBR tests. © 2016, Springer International Publishing Switzerland.