Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction
AREAS WITH unfavourable soil conditions
are often used in Sweden for housing
factories and roads. Builddevelopmeryts,
ings in such areas are normally supported
on piles, but settlements caused, for example, by a lowering of the groundwater
level may damage connecting utility lines
and in certain cases even the piles. Road
embankments must often be strengthened
with berms, embankment
piles or by
preloading often in combination with sand
drains.
Lime columns
method for
foundation
An alternative
the lime collight structures and roads
in
umn method
has been developed
Sweden during the last ten years and, in
this, powdered unslaked lime is mixed in
situ with soft clay or slit using an auger
formed like a giant "egg beater", as illu-
1. As
strated
'Professor
in
Fig.
and Research
of Soil and
Department
Institute of Technology,
Sweden.
Assistant, respectively,
Rock Mechanics, Royal
100 44 Stockholm 70,
trated.
The 10m high mast of the drilling
unit
mounted
on a standard front wheel
loader (Fig. 2a) or on a special carrier
(Fig. 2b) which tows a container (2.5m')
for storage of the unslaked lime. Capacity
of the machine is about 1 metre of lime
column per minute or about five Sm long
columns per hour so that in an eighthour shift some 30-40 columns can be
produced. The costs are about Sw. Cr.
25/m ($1.5/ft), these being affected by
suc'h factors as the accessibility
of the
site, the need for predrilling and the number of columns.
The shear strength of the stabilised soil
and the bearing capacity of the columns,
rrormally between 20 and 100kN, depend
on such factors as soil type, the organic
content of the soil, and the quality and
amount of lime added. The lime also increases the permeability
of the soil so
that the lime columns function as drains
which increase the consolidation
rate of
the soil,
The temperature in the ground increases
due to the heat released by the slaking
of the lime. When the I'ime content is
10-20% with respect to the dry weight
of the soil the temperature increase can
be so high that t'e 'boil'ing point of the
is
porewater is reached.
The lime columns can be used instead
of piles or other soil stabilisation methods
as foundations
(Fig.
structures
for light
Unslaked
Lime
Kelly
)~Rotary
table
ew x x i( xr wxexnrrvxx
Up to 10m
(30hl
~
Finished
Mixing tool
("egg be eter
lime column
Fig. 1. Manufacture
(b)
o@c)
g3
May, 1979
23
!I
!
tjl k
dl
INs
sodium, calcium and hydrogen ions present in the clay due to base exchange.
The attraction between the individual clay
particles is thereby increased.
The lime also reacts with the clay minerals in the soil, resulting in the formati!on
of calcium silicates and aluminates which
bind the soil particles
together, These
pozzolanic reactions, which are favoured
by a high pH-value, take place very slowly
over many months or years. In surface
stabilisation the carbon dioxide in the soil
and in the air reacts with the calcium hydroxide when the stabilised soil is poorly
compacted; the calcium carbonate retards
the pozzolanic reactions in the soil.
The aggregation of the soil caused by
the lime changes the grain size distribution and the plastic limit of the soil as
well as the plasticity index. The swelling
potential is reduced while the optimum
moisture content is increased due to the
flocculation of the soil.
The shear strength of the stabilised soil
increases
gradually
with
This
time,
strength increase is affected by soil type,
lime content, type of lime, density of the
compacted material and the curing conditions, including the time between the mixing and the compaction of the soil,
The lime also increases the frost sensitivity of clays; a soil which initially is not
frost sensitive can become so after the
soil 'has been treated with lime.
Organic soils can also be stabilised with
lime. The organic material
retards the
reactions
the
pozzolanic
and
impairs
increase, but it is possible to
strength
compensate for this effect to some extent
by increasing the lime content,
Tests with deep stabilisation of soil with
lime started in the United States about
1960. With this so-called drill-lime sta0.25m diameter
bilisation,
holes were
drilled to a depth
of 0.75-1.0m, their
spacing being 0.5-1.5m. Each hole was
filled with a slurry of hydrated
lime. The
migration of the lime from the holes into
soil is however,
the surrounding
very
slow, and the beneficial effects of this
method are thus doubtful.
of soft clays with
Deep stabilisation
lime has also been tried
in
hydrated
Sweden by the Swedish Geotechnical Institute (SGI) and by the Swedish State
Railways (SJ). Boreholes were filled with
and
(b) (right)
detail
limestone
or with slaked lime.
ground
Field measurements
indicate that the diffusion of the lime into the surrounding
soft clay was very limited. One to two
years after installation, only a few centimetres around the holes had been affected
by the lime due to the low diffusion rate
of the ca'Icium ions in the very soft clays
which are common in Sweden. Also, the
base exchange that takes place in the clay
influences the results since the calcium
ions are absorbed by the clay. Experiments
>~Ltme
columns
(>)
Jo
columns
r//e~//eau//
S r//r./m
nnu//rr/ru
82M
Braang
Wale
beams
Ltme
columns
(c)
Applications
method
of road embankments,
as illustrated
in
Fiqs. 4a and 4b. The columns act as vertical reinforcement
in the soil, The settlements
are thereby
reduced while the
bearing capacity is increased. The lime
columns also act as vertical drains which
increase the consolid'ation rate of the unstabilised soil within the sta'bi)ised block
of soil as well as below the block.
Length and spacing of the lime columns
depend on such factors as the maximum
total and differential settlements that can
May, 1979
25
50
Unslaked
Highest value
8'C
lime, CaO
30
20
slaked lime CaO
m temperature
kD
cu
10
Cik
c
kdk
Ck
ID
III
Il
umns. The latter technique is still economic compared with concrete piles even
when a relatively large number of columns
are required; their required length is relatively small since the load carried by each
column is small.
When the thickness of the compressible layers is large ()10m) it is normally
unnecessary to extend the columns the full
depth of these layers. The structure will
in that case follow the settlements
of the
surrounding
ground caused by, for example, a lowering of the groundwater
level.
The risk of damaging connecting underground services will then be small compared with structures founded on concrete or steel piles. Differential settlements
of the structure caused by settlements of
the surrounding
ground oan be reduced
by placing lime columns also outside the
building area.
(a)
//
i
10
20
30
60
Storage time,
Time of
80 100
150 200
300 400
days
mixing
Fig. 5. Increase of shear strength with time under different curing conditions; (a)
(above) Silty varved clay from Linkoping, Sweden, and (b) (below) Organic silty
c/ay from Sundsvall, Sweden
3.0
2.0
Unslaked lime
CaO, Room temperature
-X
X
/"
1,0
0.8
uD
IJ
03
Slaked lime
Ca(OH)2 8 C
Slaked lime
Ca(OH) z
Room temperature
0.5
0.4
kd
dli
CaO. 8 C
/
fs
I
Without lime
Room temperature
0.2
I
0,1
0.08
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
0.05
~wdhout
+8
10
lime
20
30
40 50 60
80 100
150 200
300 400
Time of
mixing
differential
settlements.
Timber
frame
houses are preferred, rather than houses
constructed of brick or lightweight con-
Lime columns
are particularly
economical when spread footings or a raft cannot be used and the maximum bearing
capacity of piles or piers cannot be utiI'ised fully. When the thickness
of the
is not
compressible
excessive
layer
((10m) the columns should extend
through these compressible
layers. A relatively large number of lime columns is
in
comparison
generally
required
with
steel or concrete piles, but the base slab
can be made relatively thin since the
structure will be supported
on a large
number of columns.
The costs of concrete piles in Sweden
are three or four times that of lime col-
26
crete blocks.
Bearing capacity
The ultimate
lime
load
Apphed
J>f
ur s %un
Column C6
Age 128 days
Lime: 6;o
Shear stress
along penmeter
of sol block
t s,<c/F,
200
150
Vane test
Penetrometer
II
'o
test
Width,
"
QC}QQQ
~Sh ar strength
from load test
tr
(Cu = '2 ttu )
~
u
30
Initial
Lengtlk L
shear
20
10
10
20
30
rk
eistance. cm
cause
load
Perimeter of
'coooa
100
50
G 0 G
o o o a~"'"'"'
C) C)
tests.
surface.
to in-
Differential settlements
timber
single-storey
A prefabricated
frame house can tolerate relatively large
adverse
without
settlements
differential
effects compared with a house built with
bricks or lightweight concrete blocks. It
is estimated
that a timber frame house
can tolerate a differential settlement of
about 1/200 without damage compared
with 1/400 for a brick house.
The differential settlement of structures
supported on lime columns depends on
the stiffness of the reinforced soil block
enclosed by the lime columns. Before
consolidation of the soil below or around
the block, the load from the structure will
soil
be transferred
to the surrounding
along the perimeter of the block (Fig. 7),
as indicated by an FEM-analysis. Only a
small part is transferred through the base
of the block, Distribution of the load depends, apart from the dimensions of the
block, on the stiffness of the block in
unwith
the surrounding
comparison
treated soil.
and the
settlements
The differential
shear distortion of the block will be the
largest along the perimeter as illustrated
rt
sue/G
sun
(1
so u/100c
(2)
Wg
2H
(3)
(B+ L)
st~.*
h
Differential
Column
senlement
-=t-+-Du -; n
Fig,
8. Calculation of differential
settlements
May, 1979
29
so
of
(4)
ch/F,
qg F.
H/B )~
2 Ca (B/L
(5)
+ 1)
1.5
H/B
G (B/L
(6)
1)
))
F=
c,
Total settlements
The method which is proposed to calculate the total settlements of a lime column group is illustrated
in Fig. 9. It is
assumed in the calculations that the maximum total settlement corresponds to the
sum of the local settlements of the reinforced block, ~h,, and of the soil under
the block, ~he .
load q
+Apphed
>
the
resu'Iting
stress
in-
separately.
The local settlement of the soil below
the block is calculated for the stress increase caused by the load q, which is
transferred to the bottom of the reinforced
block and by the load increase q, transferred through the untreated soil between
the columns. The ca'Iculations have to be
done separately for the two loads since
they act at two different levels in the
soil. It is suggested that the Boussinesq
equation or the 2:1 method also can be
used for this case. This is, however, conservative since the dep'th of the embedment will affect the stress distribution for
the load q,. The local settlement below
the block can then be calculated by dividing the soil in layers. The compression of
each layer is calculated for the stress
increase caused by q and q,
In the second case (Case B) the deformation of the b'lock is so small that the
yield strength of the columns is not exceeded. The relative stiffness of the columns with respect to the surrounding
untreated soil between the columns will
in this case govern t'e settlement
of the
block. Test data suggest that the relative
deformation of the columns and of the soil
between the columns will be the same.
It is therefore suggested that the stress
increase in the block is calculated for the
total applied load q from the Boussinesq
Applied
I I
f th)
l
//i////
Column
length, H
I l l
y ///'m
'//
(1 a)
M+ a E
(7)
c,
tests.
It is suggested the local settlement of
the soil below the reinforced block is calculated for a load q at the ground surface
by dividing the soil below the block into
layers and calculating the compression of
each layer separately. The calculated settlement will, however, be larger than the
actual settlement due to the chosen conservative method to calculate the stress
increase in the soil.
Settlement rate
Test results from large-scale load tests
Sweden and Finland (Broms 8i Boman,
1977) indicate that the lime columns act
as vertical drains in the soil and that the
methods developed by Barron (1948) for
sand drains can be used to ca'Iculate the
settlement
rate for lime co'lumns. The
permeability of soft cohesive soils is increased 100 to 1 000 times when the soil
in
OYield
load qi
crease is calculated
=~
BL
I111I
I
Mae
tests.
It is suggested
qg
2/Y
and
Applied
1oad, q2 = q q,
i'/i y
/i
//'
(B+H) (L+ H)
'th)
,'
i
(a)
Fig. 9. Calculation
30
of total settlements
Ground Engineering
(bj
Fig. 10. Load distribution, Case A: (a) Load carried by lime columns;
by unstabilised soil between columns
(bf
Load carried
Acknowledgements
The lime column method was first proposed in 1965 by Mr. Kjeld Paus, Technical Director at the Swedish construction
company BPA, Byggnadsproduktion
AB.
The equipment used for the manufacture
of the lime columns has been developed
AB, Skelleftea, Sweby Linden-Alimak
den. Euroc AB, Malmo, Sweden, has indifferent
stab'ilising
vestigated
agents
which can be used to increase the effectiveness of the lime.
The laboratory and field experiments
described in this article have been carried
out by the Swedish Geotechni'cal Institute (SGI) and at the Department of Soil
and Rock Mechanics at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
4m
4m
06.=
10 k Pa
References
Barron, R. A. (1948): "Consolidation
of finegrained soils by drain wells". Transaction, ASCE,
Vol. 113, Paper No. 2346, pp. 718-742.
Bennermark, H. (1969): "Rapport over laboratorielera". Report of labforsbk med kalkstabiliserad
oratory
tests with clay stabilised
with
lime.
Swedish
Geotechnical
Institute. Report SGI, K
9306.
Time.
100
200
300
400
500
days
600
700
800
900
1000
1100
10-
20-
115-131.
30-
5 40E
s'll
50-
60-
70-
relationships
untreated
soil.
Fig. 11 is shown measured settlement-time relationships
at the centre of
two almost identical areas at Ska-Edeby
locaited about 25km west of Stockholm.
Lime columns with a length of 6.0m and
at a spacing of 1.4m were installed in
one area, There were no columns in a
In
area.
32
J.
60-
second
Ground Engineering
areas
lying
strata.
Sweden.
Sweden.