Influence of uncontrolled burn rice husk ash on engineering properties of cement-admixed fine-grained soil

ABSTRACT

This research investigates the performance of cement-admixed fine-grained soil with rice husk ash (RHA) for its sustainable development. In this study, Ordinary Portland Cement Type I is used with RHA obtained from uncontrolled incineration process. The performance of cement-admixed soil with different percentages of RHA is evaluated based on plasticity, compressibility, remoulding water content, and strength properties. Testing results indicate that the compressibility properties are improved with the increase of additives content. However, plasticity increased with the addition of cement in stabilised soil and decreased with the further addition of RHA. Besides, the unconfined compression test results represented that the strength of soil-cement mixtures increased about 2 to 8 times with the addition of cement in soil samples. Also, the unconfined compressive strength of soil-cement-RHA mixtures amplified about 2 times concerning the test result from cement-admixed fine-grained soil reliant on the content of the additive and curing period, which indicates that RHA can be a feasible additive to enhance the strength properties of cement-soil mixtures. The strength is decreased considerably with the increase of remoulding water content. Based on the test results, it is suggested that optimum cement, RHA, and remoulding water content are about 6%, 6%, and 60%, respectively.

KEYWORDS:

• Cement
• rice husk ash
• remoulding water content
• soil
• unconfined compressive strength

Acknowledgments

The author would like to express profound gratitude to the Department of Civil Engineering, Khulna University of Engineering & Technology for the immense support.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

A. S. M. Riyad

A. S. M. Riyadis an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Khulna University of Engineering & Technology (KUET), Khulna, Bangladesh. Before that, he was a Lecturer of the same department of the same university from 2015 to 2017. He has been actively involved with various researches on physical and numerical modeling in Geotechnical and Geo-Envoronmental Engineering.

Md Shafin Shoaib

Md Shafin Shoaib was an undergraduate student in the Department of Civil Engineering at Khulna University of Engineering & Technology (KUET), Khulna,  Bangladesh. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering degree in 2019. He has been actively involved with various researches in the field of Civil Engineering.