• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.75-84
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• 2011

There are some kinds of microorganisms within soils which can precipitate some minerals such as calcite under suitable conditions. Such precipitated calcites within pores of soil may reduce permeability and also cement soil particles. In this study, whether such microorganisms can fill pores within soil and increase the strength is investigated. Basillus pasteurii was repeatedly injected into weakly cemented sand with 3% cement ratio up to 10 times for 20 days. Then, cemented sand injected with microorganisms was tested for an unconfined compressive strength and evaluated for filling voids between soil particles. The unconfined compressive strength of one time injected specimen showed a 5% increase compared to untreated specimen. However, for more than two times the strength of injected specimens gradually decreased up to 50% of the untreated specimen by microorganisms. As the number of microorganism injection increased, the amount of calcite precipitation slightly increased within voids. However, over-precipitated calcites may result in strength decrease of slightly cemented soils.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2009.03a
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• pp.326-330
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• 2009

In this study, coarse-grained geomaterials were mixed with cementing binder. To do that, typical soils from road construction sites were selected to assess the strength and stiffness characteristics of cemented geomaterials mixed with cement and recycled fly ash. Mechanistic evaluation on these samples was performed depending on the various binder contents. Increasing cementing content tend to increase the resilient modulus under repeated loadings and unconfined strength respectively. In addition, the toughness of cemented geomaterials was also estimated in order to check the ability to resisting fatigue failure.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.323-337
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• 2011

Israel's coastal region consists, mainly, of Pleistocene and Holocene sands with varying degrees of calcareous cementation, known locally as "kurkar". Previous studies of these materials emphasized the difficulty in their geotechnical characterization, due to their extreme variability. Consequently, it is difficult to estimate construction stability, displacements and deformations on, or within these soils. It is suggested that SPT and Menard pressuremeter tests may be used to characterize the properties of these materials. Values of elastic modulus obtained from pressuremeter tests may be used for displacement analyses at different strain levels, while accounting for the geometric dimensions (length/diameter ratio) of the test probe. A relationship was obtained between pressuremeter modulus and SPT blow count, consistent with published data for footing settlements on granular soils. Cohesion values, for a known friction angle, are estimated, by comparing field pressuremeter curves to curves from numerical (finite element or finite difference) analyses. The material analyzed in the paper is shown to be strain-softening, with the initial cohesion degrading to zero on development of plastic shear strains.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.1505-1516
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• 2014

In this study, a cylinder embedded within cemented soils was used to cause directly tensile failure of cemented soils. An existing dumbbell type direct tensile test and a split tensile test that is most general indirect tensile test were also carried out to verify the developed built-in cylinder tensile test. Testing specimens with two different sand/cement ratios (1:1 and 3:1) and two curing periods (7 and 28 days) were prepared and tested. Total 10 specimens were prepared for each case and their average value was evaluated. Unconfined compression tests were also carried out and the ratio of compressive strength and tensile strength was evaluated. The tensile strength determined by built-in cylinder tensile test was slightly higher than that by dumbbell type direct tensile test. The dumbbell type test has often failed in joint part of specimen and showed some difficulty to prepare a specimen. Among three tensile testing methods, the standard deviation of tensile strength by split tensile test was highest. It was shown that the split tensile test is applicable to concrete or rock with elastic failure but not for cemented soils having lower strength.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.37-46
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• 2015

In this study, a blast furnace slag with the alkaliphilic microorganism (Bacillus halodurans) alkaline activator was used to cement natural soils in the field. A low-cost and massive microbial solution for cementation of field soils was produced and compared with existing microbial culture in terms of efficiency. A field soil was prepared for three different cementation areas: a cemented ground with microbial alkaline activator (Microbially-treated soil), a cemented ground with ordinary Portland cement (Cement-treated soil), and untreated ground (Non-treated soil). The testing ground was prepared at a size of 2.6 m in width, 4 m in length, and 0.2 m in depth. After 28 days, a series of unconfined compression tests on the cement-treated and microbially-treated soils were carried out. On the other hand, a torvane test was carried out for non-treated soil. The strength of field soils treated with microorganism was 1/5 times lower than those of cement-treated soil but is 6 times higher than non-treated soil. The pH measured from microbially-treated soil was about 10, which is lower than that of cement-treated soil (pH = 11). Therefore, it is more eco-friendly than Portland cemented soils. The C-S-H hydrates were found in both cement- and microbially-treated soils through SEM-EDS analyses and cement hydrates were also found around soil particles through SEM analysis.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 1999.11b
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• pp.15-31
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• 1999

The Pusan Clay is analyzed hereafter from a point of view of mineralogy and microstructure. Results indicate that the Pusan Clay is basically illitic in nature and that the soil microstructure reveals some characteristics which could be responsible for its brittle behavior as observed from sample disturbance. The overall analysis would tend to consider that the Pusan Clay profile analyzed here shows mechanical properties similar to well structured soils or so-called cemented soils.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.87-97
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• 2008

Behaviors of cemented engineered soils, composed of rigid sand particle and soft rubber particle, are investigated under $K_o$ condition. The uncemented and cemented specimens are prepared with various sand volume fractions to estimate the effect of the cementation in mixtures. The vertical deformation and elastic wave velocities with vertical stress are measured. The bender elements and PZT sensors are used to measure elastic wave velocities. After cementation, the slope of vertical strain shows bilinear and is similar to that of uncemented specimen after decementation. Normalized vertical strains can be divided into capillary force, cementation, and decementation region. The first deflection of the shear wave in near field matches the first arrival of the primary wave. The elastic wave velocities dramatically increase due to cementation hardening under the fixed vertical stress, and are almost identical with additional stress. After decementation, the elastic wave velocities increase with increase in the vertical stress. The effect of cementation hinders the typical rubber-like, sand-like, and transition behaviors observed in uncemented specimens. Different mechanism can be expected in decementation of the rigid-soft particle mixtures due to the sand fraction. a shape change of individual particles in low sand fraction specimens; a fabric change between particles in high sand fraction specimens. This study suggests that behaviors of cemented engineered soils, composed of rigid-soft particles, are distinguished due to the cementation and decementation from those of uncemented specimens.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.599-611
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• 2022

Tendon reinforced cemented soil is applied extensively in foundation stabilisation and improvement, especially in areas with soft clay. To solve the deterioration problem led by steel corrosion, the glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) tendon is introduced to substitute the traditional steel tendon. The interface bond strength between the cemented soil matrix and GFRP tendon demonstrates the outstanding mechanical property of this composite. However, the lack of research between the influence factors and bond strength hinders the application. To evaluate these factors, back propagation neural network (BPNN) is applied to predict the relationship between them and bond strength. Since adjusting BPNN parameters is time-consuming and laborious, the particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm is proposed. This study evaluated the influence of water content, cement content, curing time, and slip distance on the bond performance of GFRP tendon-reinforced cemented soils (GTRCS). The results showed that the ultimate and residual bond strengths were both in positive proportion to cement content and negative to water content. The sample cured for 28 days with 30% water content and 50% cement content had the largest ultimate strength (3879.40 kPa). The PSO-BPNN model was tuned with 3 neurons in the input layer, 10 in the hidden layer, and 1 in the output layer. It showed outstanding performance on a large database comprising 405 testing results. Its higher correlation coefficient (0.908) and lower root-mean-square error (239.11 kPa) were obtained compared to multiple linear regression (MLR) and logistic regression (LR). In addition, a sensitivity analysis was applied to acquire the ranking of the input variables. The results illustrated that the cement content performed the strongest influence on bond strength, followed by the water content and slip displacement.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.17-31
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• 2015

An experimental program was performed to study the effects of cement stabilization on the geotechnical characteristics of sandy soils. Stabilizing agent included lime Portland cement, and was added in percentages of 2.5, 5 and 7.5% by dry weight of the soils. An analysis of the mechanical behavior of the soil is performed from the interpretation of results from unconfined compression tests and direct shear tests. Cylindrical and cube samples were prepared at optimum moisture content and maximum dry unit weight for unconfined compression and direct shear tests, respectively. Samples were cured for 7, 14 and 28 days after which they were tested. Based on the experimental investigations, the utilization of cemented specimens increased strength parameters, reduced displacement at failure, and changed soil behavior to a noticeable brittle behavior.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.207-219
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• 2021

Several additives are used to enhance the geotechnical properties (e.g., shear wave velocity, shear modulus) of soils to provide sustainable, economical and eco-friendly solutions in geotechnical and geo-environmental engineering. In this study, piezoelectric ring actuators are used to measure the shear wave velocity of unreinforced, fiber, cemented, and fiber reinforced cemented Toyoura sand. One dimensional oedometer tests are performed on medium dense specimens of Toyoura sand-cement-fiber-silica flour mixtures with different percentages of silica flour (0-42%), fiber and cement (e.g., 0-3%) additives. The experimental results indicate that behavior of the mixtures is significantly affected by the concentration of silica flour, fiber and cement additives. Results show that with the addition of 1-3% of PVA fibers, the shear wave velocity increases by only 1-3%. However, the addition of 1-4% of cement increases the shear wave velocity by 8-35%. 10.5-21% increase of silica flour reduces the shear wave velocity by 2-5% but adding 28-42% silica flour significantly reduces the shear wave velocity by 12-31%. In addition, the combined effect of cement and fibers was also found and with only 2% cement and 1% fiber, the shear wave velocity increase was found to be approximately 24% and with only 3% cement and 3% fibers this increased to 35%. The results from this study for the normalized shear modulus and normalized mean effective stress agree well with previous findings on pure Toyoura sand, Toyoura silty sand, fiber reinforced, fiber reinforced cemented Toyoura sand. Any variations are likely due to the difference in stress history (i.e., isotropic versus anisotropic consolidation) and the measurement method. In addition, these small discrepancies could be attributed to several other factors. The potential factors include the difference in specimen sizes, test devices, methods of analysis for the measurement of arrival time, the use of an appropriate Ko to convert the vertical stresses into mean effective stress, and sample preparation techniques. Lastly, it was investigated that there is a robust inverse relationship between α factor and 𝞫₀ exponent. It was found that less compressible soils exhibit higher 𝜶 factors and lower 𝞫₀ exponents.