Application of lime Ground-Granulated Basic Furnace Slag (GGBS) in improving geotechnical properties of clayey soils in floodplain area, case study, Khuzestan Plain

Roads constructed on problematic soils may have adversely influenced by the behavior of their geotechnical properties. These soils are undergoing a high degree of compressibility, low permeability, low compressive strength (lower than 40kpa), and high potential to swell with high water content as it comprises minerals, including montmorillonite which can absorb water that causes heaving, cracking and the breakup of the road pavement. Improvement of these soils is essential to improve the strength of the soil and thus partly decrease the thickness so f road layers (Amhadi et al., 2018). Where road constructions through floodplains encounter troublesome materials, one of the available classical options had always been to excavate and import suitable materials for replacement as they were either weak subgrades soil layers with weak geotechnical materials. Current limits cause assists geotechnical engineers to improve the in site soils by applying the usage of stabilizer materials. The main objectives of this research were to investigate the effect of GGBS, with and without lime, on the engineering behavior unconfined compressive strength (UCS) of the test soil and to identify the reaction products of the stabilized materials to determine the mechanisms by which changes in engineering properties are obtained by using SEM images.