Performance analysis of Ground granulated Blast Furnace Slag on contaminated soil

The aim of the present work is to examine the efficacy of ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) as an additive to improve the engineering properties of contaminated soft soil. Expansive soil is a problem all over the world and it is challenge for the civil engineers to bring certain changes in it's parameters so that the quality of the soil parameters gets improved in terms of using it as construction material. In this paper, the emphasis is given on that part mainly. Various soil parameters like grain size distribution, specific gravity, moisture content, dry density, liquid limit, plastic limit, liquidity index, consistency index, co-efficient of curvature, co-efficient of uniformity of natural soil has been determined using BIS 2720 (1). The soil parameters like dry density, shear strength, specific gravity, void ratio got changed when 5%, 10%, 15% Ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) was added with contaminated soil. The shear strength of collected soil has been improved from 1.46N/cm2 to 2.33N/cm2 for 15% mixture of GGBFS. The specific gravity also improved from 2.06 of collected soil and it goes up to 2.65 for 15% GGBFS addition. The maximum dry density (MDD) of collected soil improved from 1.81gm/cc to 1.88gm/cc for 15% addition of GGBFS. So, from the basic inter relationships of dry density of soil, specific gravity, void ratio and density of water it can be concluded that void ratio decreased with the addition of 5%, 10% and 15% GGBFS. The reduction of void pores increases the stability of the soil. Thus GGBFS can be used as an additive for contaminated land reclamation.