Influence of Gas Oil Contamination on Geotechnical Properties of Clayey Sand

Contamination of soils with petroleum products, in addition to being an environmental problem, also makes it difficult from the point of view of geotechnical engineering and doubts the use of this soil following structures, road pavements, and other constructed structures. Sridharan et al. (1981) reported an increase in soil settlement due to contamination of the region's soil with hydrocarbons, resulting in damage to industrial buildings. In recent decades, due to the importance of studying the geotechnical behavior of contaminated soils with petroleum products, many studies have been conducted on the physical and chemical properties of these soils. Much research has been done on the geotechnical properties of fine-grained and coarse-grained soils contaminated with petroleum products (Shin and Das, 2001; Ratnaweera and Meegoda, 2006; Rahman et al., 2010; Al-Aghbari, 2011; Kermani and Ebadi, 2012; Karpuzcu et al., 2018). In this study, the emphasis is on the evaluation of the polluting effect of gas oil as a pollutant with a specific gravity less than water on the fine-grained and coarse-grained behavior of soil. For this aim, a set of geochemical (including XRD and XRF analyzes), geotechnical tests (including grain size distribution, gas evaporation, Atterberg limits, and unconfined compression strength), as well as observation by scanning electron microscopy on contaminated Clayey Sand by gas oil was done.