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Engineering properties of marine soft clay stabilized by alkali residue and steel slag: an experimental study and ANN model

DOI:10.1007/s11440-022-01498-5
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Xuefei Wang at Case Western Reserve University
Xuefei Wang
Zicheng Zhang
Zicheng Zhang
Zicheng Zhang
  • This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.
Zihao Song
Zihao Song
Zihao Song
  • This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.
Jiale Li at Hebei University of Technology
Jiale Li
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Abstract and Figures

Solid wastes are increasingly used to stabilize marine soft clay. Disposals of alkali slag and steel slag cause serious problems in Lianyungang City. These two waste materials are used to produce the compound cementitious material by mixing with GGBS, replacing the cement to treat the soft clay in Xuwei Port. The raw materials are collected from fields. The orthogonal test is performed to investigate the unconfined compressive strength (UCS) of the treated soil. The influence of alkali slag-soft soil (SR-S) ratio, the steel slag-GGBS (SS-GGBS) ratio, the curing agent, and the curing time are considered, followed by the investigation of reaction mechanisms. The optimal mixing ratio is recommended when the SR-S ratio is 1:1 and the curing agent content equals 10%. A well-documented dataset is developed by summarizing 1069 data of UCS from the literature. A PSO-BP-NN model is developed using the collected data and the experimental data so that generalization is guaranteed. The model is feasible to predict the UCS of treated soil by considering characters of the material properties and experimental techniques. This study aims to provide a reference for initially determining the mixing ratio of cementitious materials at field treatments.
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RESEARCH PAPER
Engineering properties of marine soft clay stabilized by alkali residue
and steel slag: an experimental study and ANN model
Xuefei Wang
1
•Zicheng Zhang
1
•Zihao Song
1
•Jiale Li
1
Received: 16 September 2021 / Accepted: 13 February 2022 / Published online: 17 May 2022
ÓThe Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022
Abstract
Solid wastes are increasingly used to stabilize marine soft clay. Disposals of alkali slag and steel slag cause serious
problems in Lianyungang City. These two waste materials are used to produce the compound cementitious material by
mixing with GGBS, replacing the cement to treat the soft clay in Xuwei Port. The raw materials are collected from fields.
The orthogonal test is performed to investigate the unconfined compressive strength (UCS) of the treated soil. The
influence of alkali slag-soft soil (SR-S) ratio, the steel slag-GGBS (SS-GGBS) ratio, the curing agent, and the curing time
are considered, followed by the investigation of reaction mechanisms. The optimal mixing ratio is recommended when the
SR-S ratio is 1:1 and the curing agent content equals 10%. A well-documented dataset is developed by summarizing 1069
data of UCS from the literature. A PSO-BP-NN model is developed using the collected data and the experimental data so
that generalization is guaranteed. The model is feasible to predict the UCS of treated soil by considering characters of the
material properties and experimental techniques. This study aims to provide a reference for initially determining the mixing
ratio of cementitious materials at field treatments.
Keywords Marine soft clay Soil treatment Solid wastes Unconfined compressive strength PSO-BP-NN
Orthogonal test
1 Introduction
The total coastline of China reaches 18,000 km, where the
marine sedimentary soft soil is widely distributed. Differ-
ent from soil types in Europe, silty clay and layered silty
sand are the main concerns [28]. The marine clay is
deposited during marine regressions several thousand years
ago. The sediment changes from coarse particles to fine
particles gradually with the rise of sea level, leading to a
larger transportation distance of the terrigenous material.
Due to the differences in geological origins and geo-
graphical locations, structures of the soil skeleton are not
the same along the coastline [17,44]. However, the
geotechnical properties of the marine soft clay are similar
with characteristics of high moisture content, large void
ratio, high compressibility, low permeability, sensitivity,
and low shear strength [47,83]. In general, the soil tends to
be weaker from the north region to the south region
[97,103].
Several soil improvement methods have been proposed
to enhance the soil strength and stabilize the marine soft
clay. The common techniques are preloading, stone col-
umn, pile support, and plastic drainage slab being classified
as the mechanical method [16,54,96,103]. The chemical
improvement methods include the seep in situ mixing,
surface stabilization by cement, fly ash, bentonite, gypsum,
and blast furnace slag [19,22,64,68]. The soil replace-
ment method is effective in shallow foundation treatment,
controlling settlements, and improving bearing capacities.
This method has wide adaptability to clay, saturated soft
soil, and silty clay [4,42,111]. However, the cement and
lime stabilized soil consumes large amounts of energy and
resource; besides, the emission of CO
2
from cement fab-
rications causes serious problems to both environment and
human lives [4]. Therefore, supplementary cementitious
materials are necessary to develop waste or by-products in
construction projects.
&Jiale Li
jiale.li@hebut.edu.cn
1
School of Civil and Transportation Engineering, Hebei
University of Technology, Tianjin 300401, China
123
Acta Geotechnica (2022) 17:5089–5112
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-022-01498-5(0123456789().,-volV)(0123456789().,-volV)
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... Several regression models have been used to assess the relationship between the ICMV and in situ data, but the accuracy is limited. Therefore, the ANN model is used to build the prediction model by integrating various characteristic values [56]. Zaman et al. [67] developed an ANN model to correlate the resilient modulus with subgrade soil properties. ...
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