Curing of waste-mud and its road performance evaluation

Abstract

To solve the problem of waste-mud accumulation both occupying land resources and polluting the ecological environment, cement is used as a curing agent to cure the waste-mud to become a perfect roadbed filler, and the engineering performance of solidified mud was studied with unconfined compressive strength (UCS), moisture content, compaction performance, and California bearing ratio (CBR) as evaluation indexes. The evaluation results show 1) that cement has a good curing effect on waste-mud and can improve its strength and stability; 2) that the water content and maximum dry density (MDD) of cured slurry decrease with the increase of cement admixture, and the optimal moisture content increases with the increase of cement admixture; 3) that CBR increases with the increase of cement admixture and maintenance days; 4) that the moisture content of cured slurry with 14% cement admixture is similar to its optimal water content (OWC) at the maintenance age of 14 d; thus, it can be considered that the curing slurry with 14% cement could be directly used as roadbed fillers.