Performance Comparison of Stabilised Soils Based On their Liquefaction Resistances – A Review

The behavior of sands under undrained monotonic and cyclic loading are a widely discussed topic in fields of geotechnical engineering. The strength of cohesion less soils get drastically reduced under sudden undrained loading, especially if they are in saturated or submerged state, making them more prone to liquefaction. Researchers have conducted experiments on soils treated with a wide variety of chemicals, fibres,waste products and biopolymers to find out the liquefaction resistance of the modified sands. Among these additives, use of chemicals like cement pose major environmental problems like carbon dioxide emission and production of air pollutants like SO2, NO2, VOCs and other particulate matter. Plastic wastes such as PET bottles and plastic bags and byproducts like flyash and granulated blast furnace slag are used from past due to their strength enhancing properties. Plastic require thousands of years for their breakdown. The leachate generated by flyash and slag are slightly acidic in nature, polluting surface waters. In order to develop environment friendly construction practices, biopolymers like agar, starch, guar gel and xanthan gum are included recently in soil stabilization techniques. Being, renewable, reusable and carbon neutral, there is an increased interest on these biopolymers. This study is aimed at comparing the liquefaction resistances of modified and unmodified sands with a variety of additives based on results of Triaxial tests.