Investigation of the impact of silica fume reinforcement on the expansive clayey soil

Expansive soils have caused damage to foundation of structures over the world and its amount was more than twice those by floods, hurricanes and earthquakes. Volume of the expansive soils may change significantly depending upon their water contents. Understanding these types of may enable engineers to reduce the potential harms to the structures. This work outlines an integrated experiment program to explore swelling of clay and the impact of silica fume on the reduction of volume change of expansive soils. Series of laboratory experiments have been performed on soil samples with 0%, 1% and 10% of silica fume by weight of soil. The test results showed that montmorillonite was highly expansive when exposed to water. It had volume change of 16% at 50% optimum water content with 0% silica fume. The vertical deformation would decrease by 98% to 100% after three days with silica fume content of 1% to 10%, the vertical compression in soil sample was found only when the soil was stabilized with silica fume. The maximum drop in swelling was found in soil with 10% of silica fume. These investigation showed that stabilization with silica fume can significantly reduce swelling potential of expansive clay