Abstract
Microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation (MICP) is a novel ground improvement technique which has promising applications in geotechnical engineering. The research of this technique commonly focuses on calcium carbonate precipitation and geotechnical properties of bio-cemented soil in fully saturated or dry states. However, the natural soil may contain different amount of water, which will have influences on the geotechnical properties of soil. The objective of the present study is to investigate the mechanical properties of bio-cemented sand with different water contents and drying temperatures. During MICP treatment, all the bio-cemented sand samples were prepared at the same cementation level. Meanwhile, two drying temperatures (i.e., 30 °C and 60 °C) were adopted to obtain different water contents. Calcium carbonate content and water distribution were tested, and unconfined compression test was conducted to measure the unconfined compressive strength. The experimental results show that, as the water content increases, the strength decreases firstly and then increases at the same drying process. This phenomenon may be caused by the interaction of pore water and calcium carbonate crystals during the drying period. However, under the same water content, drying in 30 °C has more remarkable influences on the strength in comparison with the drying in 60 °C. The much higher strength obtained by the 30 °C drying in dried state implies that different temperatures may change the crystal forms of calcium carbonate.
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Zeng, C., Zheng, Jj., Cui, Mj., Yao, Xc. (2018). Effect of Water Content on the Strength of Bio-Cemented Sand in Various Drying Process. In: Chen, R., Zheng, G., Ou, C. (eds) Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on Asia Urban GeoEngineering. Springer Series in Geomechanics and Geoengineering. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6632-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6632-0_3
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