A Field Study on Stabilizing Desert Sandy Soil with A Developed Environmentally Friendly Polymer

Abstract

This field study introduces a developed emulsion polymer for serving light and medium loading traffic. The polymer has a previous laboratory study that recommended its concentrations for mixing and coating. The polymer has been used to stabilize only a thin layer of a desert route with a thickness of 8 cm over a compacted sandy layer of 22 cm. The measurements conducted on the stabilized soil showed that the reaction modulus increased by 411%. The compressive strength increased and the water absorption decreased with the increase of stabilization curing period up to 28 days. The California bearing ratio increased by 425%, while it decreased after submerging in water for 4 days and lost 25% of its achieved value. The field investigation revealed that the light and medium loading vehicles up to 22 tons did not cause any damage in the stabilized layer during moving. However, the vehicle of 22 tons caused little damage with an impact load on the thin paved layer. It is concluded that the used stabilizer polymer can serve the light and medium loading traffic with a thicker layer section and improving the quality assurance of implementation.