ABSTRACT
A soil-cement composite, comprising a thoroughly blended mix of soil, cement, and water, has played a crucial role in the construction of various civil infrastructures like bridge foundations, tunnels, highway embankments, foundations for port and harbour structures, and many more. Though efficient, traditional high-cement formulations pose severe environmental concerns, leading to the exploration of alternative materials that can bring sustainability to construction practices. This study focuses on utilizing “Ground-Granulated Blast-Furnace Slag” (GGBS) to explore its impact on the engineering characteristics of soil-cement mixtures. In this investigation, clay soil is blended with 20% of OPC and varying proportions of GGBS (20%, 30%, and 40% by weight of cement) as a replacement for OPC. The composite mixture is subjected to several Unconfined Compressive Strength (UCS) tests to assess the undrained shear strength of soil-cement-GGBS mixtures at distinct curing intervals (7, 14, and 28 days). Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) is also employed to examine the microstructure of the soil-cement composite, revealing the arrangement of particles, pore structures, and the distribution of cementitious materials. The results show that the composition having clay soil and 20% cement, replaced with 20% GGBS, yields maximum strength among all tested compositions with a significant increase of 24% compared to the conventional soil-cement mixture of clay soil and 20% cement only.
