A methodology for determining crushing strength of stabilized waste from shear wave velocity

Researchers, in general, resort to crushing strength tests to determine the strength gain by stabilized waste with curing period. However, these tests are not only destructive in nature, but also require testing of several identical samples and sample preparation, which is manually done, is cumbersome. This necessitates the development of an alternate technique that can be employed to measure as well as to monitor the strength gain by stabilized waste with curing period that too in a non-destructive and non-invasive way. Such studies are significantly important for proper characterization, which is a pre-requisite when converting the waste into usable material, and for efficient solid Waste Management. In this direction, application of shear wave velocity that can be correlated with crushing strength seems to be quite promising, and its usefulness to characterize the soil is already well established. With this in mind, an attempt was made in this study to develop a methodology that can be employed to determine the strength gain by stabilized waste by adopting to shear wave velocity measurements. Details of the methodology adopted are presented. It has been observed that strength gain by stabilized waste increases as percentage cement content (PCC) increases. Furthermore, it has been identified that adopting to shear wave velocity measurements are quite useful to decide desired curing period. Also, it has been found that shear wave velocity (V-s) correlates in a well-defined way with crushing strength (sigma(c)) of stabilized waste, only, when admixed cement content exceeds 20%.