STABILIZE THE SOIL USING A COMBINATION OF RICE HUSK AND CEMENT

Abstract

Soil stabilization is a technique for improving and repairing the mechanical properties of soils such as compressive strength, shear strength, permeability, plasticity, compressibility, and durability. The other important part is how to reduce the massive use of cement for this purpose and try to use other materials that can do the same job, such as rice husk, which contains 90-93% silica, which is considered a great binding agent and is used as a soil stabilization material. The soil that has fewer engineering properties can be stabilized by adding various percentages of rice husk for instance 5%, 10%, 15%, and a small amount 5% of cement. The finding of this research is to determine modified soil characteristics such as maximum dry density (MDD), optimum moisture content (OMC), maximum shear strength through Specific gravity test, Atterberg's limits test, Compaction test, Shear test of soil which include the soil without additives and  with mixing of  5%, 10%, 15% rice husk and 5% cement. When comparing the results of the samples with and without additives, OMC decreased by 23.4%, while MDD increased by 1.95%. In the direct shear test, shear strength increased by 3.4%, while the angle of internal friction decreased by 2.4% in the combination of 10% rice husk and 5% cement with soil. For practical applications, 10% rice husk with 5% cement is indicated as the best amount based on maximal strength development of the soil.