BEARING CAPACITY AND COMPRESSIBILITY ON IMPROVED LOESS BY COMPACTION AND CEMENT ADMIXTURE

Geotechnical engineering always deals with the field or compacted condition using shear strength or deformation behavior. Khon Kaen loess soil can be classified as a moderate to moderately severe in collapse index. With long term infiltration, its cohesion is almost completely gone. Therefore, this research is aimed to study the behaviors of the bearing capacity and settlement of the compacted Khon Kaen loess soil with and without cement. The testing results from the laboratory and from the field can be shown that the soil and soil-cement stabilization are improved by 95% for modified compaction. This is due to the effects of initial density, initial water content, %cement added, curing time duration and the size of the plate on the bearing capacity and deformation behavior. The results also show that the increasing in water content has the greatest influence to reduce in the bearing capacity but increase in compressibility of the specimens. However, for testing with the same energy of compaction but lower water content, less settlement at any pressures in the unsoaked condition with the more collapse settlement can be found. On the other hand, the 95% modified compaction improvement, the collapse potential/ collapse index are almost negligible. Finally, with more cement added, less settlement with the more bearing capacity can be achieved.