and Air Curing Technique

This article describes a laboratory study on stabilizing peat soil using Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) as binding agent and Polypropylene fibers as additive. Due to high initial water content of the stabilized peat soil samples and in-order to gradually reduce their moisture content, the stabilized peat soil samples kept in normal air temperature and out of water intrusions to drier condition during the curing period. This process of curing the stabilized peat soil with cement is been named Air Curing Technique. Laboratory tests used for the strength evaluations of stabilized peat soil are Unconfined Compression Strength (UCS), and California Bearing Ratio (CBR). Air Curing periods used are 28, 90, 180 days for the UCS tests and 90 days for the CBR (soaked, and un-soaked) tests. As the curing time for the stabilized peat soil continues the moisture content decreases, thus weight of Water/weight of Cement (W/C) reduces, and as a result stabilized peat soil is hardened and gains strength. The result of strength tests show significant strength improvement of stabilized peat soil through curing period. Also polypropylene fibers when added to the stabilized peat soil with cement, not only give more strength values to the stabilized peat, rather contribute a considerable amount of uniformity and intactness to the stabilized peat as well