Experimental study of stress-strain properties of cement treated lead-contaminated soils

This paper presents a study of the uniaxial unconfined compressive deformation properties of cement stabilized/solidified lead contaminated soils. The contaminated soils are prepared in the laboratory with different lead contents and cement contents. The control samples (cement treated soils without heavy metal) are also prepared for comparison purpose. The test results show that the presence of lead in soil interferes with the cement hydration process, which is directly reflected by the stress-strain curve, failure strain, and deformation modulus of cemented soil. For specimens with 0.01% and 0.1% lead concentration, the strain at failure decrease with the increase of strength and curing time, and are larger than that of control sample. Toughness Index is used to evaluate the toughness of cemented soils. The deformation modulus of cement treated lead contaminated soils changes with the variation of lead content, cement content and curing time. There is a linear relationship between the deformation modulus and unconfined compressive strength