THE EFFECT OF AGGRESSIVE

ENVIRONMENT ON STABILISED EXPANSIVE

SOILS USING CONSTRUCTION AND
DEMOLITION WASTE BLENDED WITH BY
PRODUCT CEMENTITIOUS MATERIALS

Sachintha Warnakulasuriya
22039092

Project Outline
MASTERS PROJECT
(UBGMRK-60-M)

Academic Year 2022/23

Faculty of Architecture and Built Environment

UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST OF ENGLAND

MASTERS PROJECT Project outline

Contents

1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 3
2. Aim of the research ........................................................................................................................ 4
3. Research questions ......................................................................................................................... 4
4. Research objectives ........................................................................................................................ 4
5. Literature review ............................................................................................................................ 5
6. Reference........................................................................................................................................ 6

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MASTERS PROJECT Project outline

1. Introduction
As economies grow, the majority of nations have a tendency to massive increment in construction
activities, which has a correspondingly rising impact on both the economy and the environment in the
construction sector. When consider about the economic and environmental impacts, construction and
demolition waste (CDW) can be identified as a rising problem in the construction sector and normally
dump the CDW into landfilling. The second problem is the expansive soils which are having the large
deformations due to swelling and shrinkage that costs lot of money due to damaging the buildings or
structures. Some types of these expansive soils are showing higher plasticity and cause a destruction
to the structures during the saturation process and will be resulted to reduction of the bearing capacity.
(Parihar and Gupta, 2021)

According to the chemical and mechanical properties of construction and demolition waste (CDW),
there have a potential to develop the compressive strength properties in order to reduce the usage of
cement while minimizing the carbon foot print (Ujile and Abbey, 2022). Therefore, aforementioned
issue regarding the expansive soil can be treated by stabilizing the expansive soil using the
construction and demolition waste blended with by-product cementitious materials. When look into
most common CDW types, recycled brick particles, fine concrete particles and recycled aggregate,
sand, tiles and ceramic, plastics, glass, wood & paper can be identified (Yuan, Lu and Hao, 2013),
however these all types of construction wastes can not be used for the stabilization of expansive soil
in industrial level; only the recycled brick particles, fine concrete particles and recycled aggregate,
tiles and ceramic can be used for industrial purposes hence the large amount of waste are being
generated annually.

The main criteria for this study is analyse the behaviour of aggressive environment and effects against
the stabilized expansive soils. According to the past experience, it has been observed that the
structures which are designed and built for a specific time period is not achieved in the aggressive
environments; in other words, structures have been failed before the design life under different
aggressive environments (Aguiar, Camões and Moreira, 2008). Therefore, it is relevant to study the
behaviour of the aggressive environment when researching to find new product about the stabilization
of the expansive soil using the construction waste with blended by-product cementitious materials.

Due to presence of the aggressive elements in the soil will be resulted to decreasing the cementitious
bond strength between stabilized clays (Meng et al., 2017). Therefore, test specimens should keep in
different types of aggressive environments such as sulphate environment (sulphate attack), marine
environment (Chloride attack), industrial wastes (acidic environment) for a reasonable period of time
(Lakhssassi et al., 2019) and then effects or changes can be identified by the micro-structure analysis
with Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), mechanical characteristics and strength of the stabilized
expansive soil in the laboratory conditions. Finally, it can be come up with a decision regarding the
influence of aggressive environment for the strength and the durability of stabilization and it will
create an open space to find more resistive materials with some adjustment in the composition of the
stabilization process as an extension of this study to withstand against the aggressive environments to
achieve design life of the stabilization process.

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MASTERS PROJECT Project outline

2. Aim of the research

The aim of this research is to identify the behaviour of stabilized expansive soil using the construction
and demolition waste blended with by-product cementitious materials on aggressive environment such
as industrial waste chemical environment, acidic environment, marine environment & etc; with the
laboratory tests such as micro-structure analysis and mechanical characteristic.

3. Research questions
➢ Soil sample should be exposed to the aggressive environment reasonable time period and
project duration should be planned accordingly.

➢ Each type of materials should be practical to use in the industrial level of stabilization.

➢ Carbon emission should be less than the conventional stabilization processes.

➢ Identified soil type should be a common soil type in the UK to address the current issues in
the industry.

➢ Aggressive environments which are recreated in the laboratory conditions should be represent
the actual scenario in the industries.

➢ Micro-structure analysis should be performed to identify the effect in the aggressive

environment on micro-structure level. Also, mechanical characteristic should be defined in a
way that make sure the safety and regulations.

4. Research objectives
➢ Identify the suitable type of expansive soils and extract a soil sample from an identified
location.

➢ Select the suitable types of construction and demolition waste for the stabilization process.

➢ Select the suitable by-product cementitious materials for the stabilization process.

➢ Find the optimum proportions of each element to achieve the stabilization from another
corresponding research (Parallel research).

➢ Expose the stabilized soil samples into different aggressive environments over reasonable
period of time.

➢ After that period of time, take the samples and perform some laboratory test to identify the
effect of stabilized expansive soils on aggressive environments.

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5. Literature review
After identifying the effect of aggressive environment on civil engineering applications, different
studies have been carried out to find out the resistance of each material against those aggressive
environments, because of the reduction of strength parameters while reducing design life of the civil
engineering applications. This research is a parallel research of the expansive soil stabilization process
using the construction waste and by-product cementitious materials; and optimum composition will be
subjected to the different types of aggressive environments to identify the resistance of the new
stabilization process over the conventional methods. This subject area is new and a smaller number of
the researches have been done; but related studies about aggressive environments against some new
products or materials can be identified and similar process can be used to evaluate this scenario based
on the expansive soil stabilization with CDW and by-product cementitious materials.

A recent study (Lakhssassi et al., 2019) which is performed by Lakhssassi et al have been identified
the effects of aggressive environments on the calcium fly ash based geopolymer and the ordinary
Portland cement pastes by simulating those environments using the different types of chemical
compositions under the laboratory conditions. In this study, sulfuric acid solutions (5%), magnesium
sulphate solution (5 g/l), sodium sulphate (44g/l) and sodium chloride (164g/l) have been used to
observe the durability and effects of the aggressive environment on FA-GP geopolymer after soaking
the samples over 120 days continuously. Finally, it has been observed that the FA-GP geopolymer
shows the slight increment in the weight while OPC paste indicate the considerable reduction in the
weight in acidic solution. The main cause for this process is the formation of ettringite and gypsum,
and it has been verified through the micro-structural analysis by FT-IR and X-ray diffraction (XRD)
methods. Therefore, the researchers concluded that the FA-GP geopolymer is more resistive against
the acidic and sulphate environments compared to the OPC paste.

According to the T. Meng (Meng et al., 2017), micro-structure analysis of the cement-stabilized soil
in the coastal environment (marine) with addition of nano calcium carbonate (NC); has been studied
by performing the uniaxial compressive test and micro-structure analysis methods including X-ray
Diffraction Analysis (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Mercury Intrusion
Porosimetry (MIP). The aggressive environmental conditions were recreated in the laboratory
conditions using some ions with different level of concentrations such as Na+ (219 mmol/L), Ca2+ (10
mmol/L), Mg2+ (36 mmol/L), HCO3- (15 mmol/L), Cl- (272 mmol/L) and SO42- (12 mmol/L). As a
conclusion it was clear that the resistance to the aggressive environment has been increased by adding
NC into composition and it was verified through the micro-structure analysis after observing the
nucleation and nano-filling of the NC. In addition, increment in the strength also observed
corresponding to the different samples which have different compositions of each material.

With the help of these kind of studies, the new method to stabilize the expansive soil using the CDW
with by-product cementitious materials can be evaluated against the aggressive environments in the
laboratory conditions. Due to limitations in the time frame, selected test will be performed to obtain
the expected results over selected period of time.

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6. Reference
• Aguiar, J.B., Camões, A. and Moreira, P.M. (2008) Performance of Concrete in Aggressive
Environment. International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials 2(1), pp. 21-25.

• Lakhssassi, M.Z., Alehyen, S., Alouani, M.E. and Taibi, M. (2019) The effect of aggressive
environments on the properties of a low calcium fly ash based geopolymer and the ordinary
Portland cement pastes. Materialtoday PROCEEDINGS 13(3), pp. 1169-77.

• Meng, T., Qiang, Y., Hu, A., Xu, C. and Lin, L. (2017) Effect of compound nano-CaCO3
addition on strength development and microstructure of cement-stabilized soil in the marine
environment. Construction and Building Materials 151, pp. 775-81.

• Parihar, N.S. and Gupta, A.K. (2021) Chemical stabilization of expansive soil using liming
leather waste ash. International Journal of Geotechnical Engineering 15(08), pp. 1008-20.

• Ujile, M.C. and Abbey, S.J. (2022) The use of fine portions from construction and demolition
waste for expansive soil stabilization: A review. Frontiers of Structural and Civil Engineering
16, p.pages803–816.

• Yuan, H., Lu, and Hao, J.J. (2013) The evolution of construction waste sorting on-site.
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews Volume 20, pp. Pages 483-490.

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