Load Settlement Behaviour of Fly ash Mixed with Waste Sludge and Cement

One of the effective utilization strategies for fly ash and waste sludge is to use it as a fill material to raise low lying areas. Bearing capacity and settlement are the required input for the design of foundations on such fills. To determine the bearing capacity, plate load tests were carried out on the compacted beds of fly ash, fly ash-waste sludge and fly ash-waste sludge–cement. The tests were conducted by keeping 90, 95 and 100 % relative compaction, fresh and fresh submerged conditions, aged (28 days) and aged (28 days) submerged conditions as variables of the tests. The load-settlement curves were plotted for fly ash and mix blends. The minimum load was obtained for fly ash under submerged condition, further the test results show that the fly ash becomes flowable on submergence. On the other hand when the fly ash was mixed with waste sludge and cement, the load carrying capacity was found to improve to a greater extent. Test beds prepared with fly ash–cement-waste sludge under as compacted condition (fresh) show very high load carrying capacity (1600–2180 kN/m²). An analytical method has also been validated for fly ash–cement-waste sludge mix which was developed to estimate the settlement of footing resting on fly ash taking into account the pre-consolidation stresses. The non linearity of load-settlement behavior was appropriately modeled, on the basis of available plate load test data incorporated in the method. The method requires as input, the pre-consolidation stress and Young’s modulus of compacted mix of fly ash-waste sludge–cement. A comparison of load-settlement values observed in plate load tests and predicted values for the mix 47 %FA + 45 %S + 8 %C, using the proposed method shows good agreement. Hence, this relationship may also be useful to the field engineers to check the reported load-settlement values for such types of mixes in the field.