Interpretation of Geotechnical Properties of Lime Treated soils with Additives

Expansive soils are found in the arid and semi-arid regions of the world and are in abundance where the annual evaporation exceeds the precipitation. Expansive soils experience large volume changes on exposure to climates with alternate wet and dry seasons. These soils shrink on drying with accompanied cracking. If rewetted subsequent to drying, swelling occurs with enclosure of fissures. Expansive soils exhibits high plasticity characteristics, low strength properties and high swell shrink characteristics. The alternate swell shrink seasons cause distress to the structure or the pavement constructed on them. Maintenance and repair cost of the distressed structure or pavement may be quite high. New methods continue to be researched to increase the strength properties and to reduce the swell behavior of expansive soils. Many researchers have tried new stabilizers like natural fabricated and byproduct materials, gels, polymers, silica fumes etc. and there use as stabilizers for the modification of clayey soils and from literature available the results are encouraging. Hence, in this present work, lime and other additives such as NaCl, NaOH and Mine Tailings has been used to stabilize expansive black cotton soils.