The Effect Of Adding Iron Powder On Atterberg Limits Of Clay Soils

ABSTRACT: The increasing cost of building soil structures has made engineers use local materials to avoid transporting large volumes of construction materials. Soil stabilization is the process of changing soil properties to improve strength and durability. By adding natural or artificial materials, it can improve the shear strength of the soil and, as a result, increase its bearing capacity and reduce foundation settlement. Different materials such as lime, Portland cement, and fly ash have been used for stabilization of fine-grained and expansive soils. However, due to the growing population of the world and increasing human needs, there is an increasing accumulation of industrial and agricultural wastes. Wastes and garbage have become one of the main problems of modern societies and there is a large body of research dedicated to how these wastes can be safely reused. One of the industries that allow for the reuse of wastes is the construction industry. In the present research, iron powder, as a waste, is combined with clay soils in order to examine its effects on the atterberg limits of the soils. Five different types of soil with initial plasticity indices of 26, 31, 35, 39, and 49 are used for this experiment. Plasticity indices (i.e. liquid limit, plastic limit, and plasticity index) of the sample soils combined with different percentages of waste iron powder will be examined and compared with the plasticity of the original soils.