Mechanical Behavior of Cement-Treated Soils with Nanosilica—A Green Binder

This study deals with the mechanical properties of cement-treated soils with the addition of nanosilica particles. Different industries discovered the beneficial uses of nanoparticles; however, the potential use of nanoparticles in geotechnical engineering is a subject that is still unclear and needs some investigation. Nanosilica particles could act as a green binder for geotechnical site works. Therefore, in this study, the effect of nanosilica material in cement-treated clay and cement-treated clayey sand specimens were examined. Index properties, compaction characteristics and unconfined compressive strength of nanosilica added cement-treated soils were assessed. Tests were carried out on specimens with 0%, 5%, and 10% cement by dry weight of soil with 0%, 0.3%, 0.5%, and 0.7% nanosilica content to evaluate the strength properties of the specimens. The curing periods were 7 and 28 days. The results of the preliminary tests showed that, the inclusion of nanosilica resulted in a limited increase in the optimum moisture content of the specimens and the maximum dry density of the specimens had a limited decrease at 0.7% nanosilica content. The performance achieved by the addition of nanosilica particles was very remarkable compared to the specimens that were prepared only with cement. Clayey sand specimens with 5% cement and 0.5% nanosilica had a similar compressive strength with specimens that had 10% cement in 28 days. Consequently, inclusion of nanosilica particles in soils is a promising development to reduce the cement amount in cement-treated soils.