International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056

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DESIGN OF SOIL CEMENT ROAD

Agana Biju1, Anand B2, Annu Maria Baby3, Krishna S4, Rahul T P5, Sankar Bose6

1,2,3,4,5UG Students, Department of Civil Engineering, VISAT College of Engineering, Kerala, India
6Assistant: Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, VISAT College of Engineering, Kerala, India
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Abstract – Soil – cement is the simple product of Portland  Preparation of alignment design drawings.
cement blended with soil and or aggregate, and water and  Design of pavement.
compacted for use in pavement structure. It is an engineered  Preparation of detailed cost estimate.
material designed and constructed for various pavement
applications or material characteristics. The present project is 3. CRITICAL REVIEW
a practical study on using Soil cement product as the
pavement material. As a part of this project various laboratory 3.1 GENERAL
test like CBR test, standard proctor’s test were conducted and
also traffic volume studies are done. Finally the results shown Engineers are often faced with the problem of constructing
that the soil is suitable for using sub base course of flexible roadbeds on or with soils, which do not possess sufficient
pavement. strength to support wheel loads imposed upon them either
in construction or during the service life of the pavement. It
Key Words: Soil – cement, pavement, design, sub base, is, at times, necessary to treat these soils to provide a stable
flexible pavement. sub grade or a working platform for the construction of the
pavement. These treatments result in less time and energy
1. INTRODUCTION required for the production, handling, and placement of road
and bridge fills and sub grades and therefore, less time to
Transportation is the backbone to the development of urban complete the construction process thus reducing the
areas. With growth, the mobility needs increases. People’s disruption and delays to traffic. These treatments are
use of personalized vehicles increases. This resulting in generally classified into two processes, soil modification or
traffic congestion and delay to overall mobility of the people soil stabilization. The purpose of sub grade modification is to
in urban areas. Increased costs associated with the use of create a working platform for construction equipment. The
high quality materials have led to the need for local soils to concrete pavement using soil cement perform well under
be used in geotechnical and road construction. The addition poor drainage conditions and thus avoid wastage of
of a few percentages by weight of Portland cement has resources on repeated treatment of flexible pavement. The
shown its effectiveness towards better control of workability pavement design using soil cement is observed to be cost
during compaction. On this context we introduce our project. effective.
It is a practical study on using soil cement product as the
pavement material. 3.2 EARLIER RESEARCHES

2. OBJECTIVES [1] Ravi Kumar T, Sai Krishna K, Syamprasad S, Ramesh

B, Parvathi G, Vinod T, Nagaraju P ( 2017)
The main objective of the project is in order to introduce the
road pavement construction using soil cement. Soil cement This paper presents that Soil cement roads are better and
roads are one of the best options for the improvement of economical way to provide rural road facility where the
road densities in developing countries like India. Soil cement traffic volume is very low. Soil-cement is the simple product
is frequently used in road construction as a sub base layer of Portland cement blended with soil and or aggregate, and
reinforcing and protecting the sub grade. It has good water and compacted for use in pavement structure. It is an
compressive and shear strength. It is an inexpensive engineered material designed and constructed for various
pavement material with long life and high strength. pavement applications or material characteristics. This
paper presents a practical study on using soil cement
The following broad objectives have been identified for the product as the pavement material. The results of this paper
study: shown that the soil is suitable for using base course and sub
base course of flexible pavement in the conditions of low
 To conduct the existing traffic conditions of the Pala volume traffic flows.
town.
 To conduct reconnaissance survey along the [2] John E. Michener (2008).
proposed alignment.
 To conduct topographic survey using Total Station. The premise of this research is that the allowable delay time
 Geotechnical survey and traffic survey. between mixing of a soil-cement mixture and completion of
compaction may be shorter or longer than the widely

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 International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056
Volume: 05 Issue: 04 | Apr-2018 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072

adopted industry standard of 2 hours, depending upon cement-lime mortar. The drying shrinkage value for cement-
environmental factors. Accordingly, the specific objectives of soil mortar is very high as compared to cement mortar.
this research were to quantify the effects of certain Cement-soil mortar gives higher bond strength with the
environmental factors on the relative strength loss of soil- decrease in clay percent. In soil cement mortar, flow value is
cement subjected to compaction delay and to develop a controlled by clay fraction of the mortar mix rather than
numerical tool that can be easily used in the field by cement content of soil mortar. Whereas in the case of cement
engineers and contractors for determining an acceptable mortar and cement-lime mortar, cement content of the mix
compaction delay time for individual projects based on controls the flow value. Cement-soil mortar leads to better
environmental conditions at the respective sites. Knowing in tensile bond strength when compared to cement mortar and
advance how much time is available for working the soil- cement-lime mortar.
cement will help contractors schedule their activities more
appropriately and ultimately produce higher quality roads. [7] Costas A.Anagno– stopoulos (2004)
Specific factors selected for investigation in this research
included material type, cement content, wind speed, In this study, a laboratory test programme was carried out
temperature, relative humidity, and compaction delay. to find out the effect of inclusion of cement and acrylic resin
on physical and engineering behaviour of a soft clay. A series
[3] Arumugam and K. Muralidharan (1997) of tests are conducted with the addition of 5% to 30% of
cement contents and acrylic resin of 5%. It is concluded that
It was about stabilizing the locally available soils and using the development of strength and stiffness for a short curing
them as subgrade materials generally reduce the cost of time (7 days) is delayed significantly because of A.R addition
pavement construction. It was concluded that the while for long curing time (28 days) the engineering
mechanical stabilization saving in the construction cost of parameters are increased considerably.
pavement up to 43% has been effected. Lime and cement
stabilization saves the amount by 46.2% and 27.56% [8] T.Lopez-Lara, J.A. Zepeda- Garrido and V.M. Castario
respectively. (1999)

[4] Abu Siddique and Bipradas Rajbongshi (2002) This paper includes the evaluation of the main index
properties of the soil, along with a characterization of the
A study of Mechanical properties of a cement stabilized materials through X-ray diffraction.
coastal soil for use in road construction, this paper present
the soil cement stabilization with 1%, 3%, and 5% cement 3.3 SUMMARY OF LITERATURE REVIEW
fulfill the requirements of road sub-base and base subjected
to light traffic. Analyses using CIRCLY computer program All the literatures deals with the use of stabilization
were conducted to estimate the thickness of soil-cement for to improve the properties of a material is becoming more
paved and unpaved rural road maximum width 2.5 m and widespread due to the increased strength and load
subjected to anticipated design traffic loading of light cross spreading ability that these materials can offer. A collective
country vehicle (LCCV), i.e., and jeep. experience has demonstrated that cement can be mixed to
increase the strength of soil in different ways. However, the
[5] Manikant Mandal and Dr, Mayajit Mazumdar (1995) basics always remain the same: treated soil is the simple
product of cement with soil. There is no secret ingredient or
This study was made on the effect of additives on lateritic proprietary formula that makes treated soil mixed with
soil stabilization with cement and lime. Particularly, the cement. Stabilization is the process of mixing a stabilizer, for
strength and fatigue behavior, under repeated flexure, of example cement, with a soil or imported aggregate to
stabilized lateritic soil treated with additives, have not been produce a material whose strength is greater than that of the
studied in our country till now. original unbound material. In this report soil has been taken
from PALA, and several laboratory test is done on that soil
[6] Reddy and Gupta (2007) sample and soil mixed with cement. The experiments done
on the treated and untreated soil are Atterberg‟s limit
They conducted research on soil cement block masonry. (liquid limit and plastic limit), Standard proctor test, Direct
Their paper focused on an experimental study in shear test and California bearing ratio (CBR) test by adding
understanding the various characteristics of cement soil 3%, 5%, and 7% cement on the soil sample.
mortars in the fresh and hardened state. Workability,
strength, water retentivity, shrinkage and stress-strain 4. MATERIALS USED
characteristics of cement soil mortars and bond strength of
soil-cement block couplets using such mortars were SOIL CEMENT:
examined. From the results obtained, they concluded that
the composite mortars like cement-soil and cement-lime A cement-modified soil contains relatively small proportions
mortar can attain higher flow values without segregation of of Portland cement. The result is caked lightly harden
constituent materials. Cement-soil mortar possesses better material, similar to a soil, but with improved mechanical
water retentivity when compared to cement mortar and

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properties –lower plasticity, increased bearing ratio and

shearing strength, and decreased volume change.

Also it have various properties like:

 Stiffness
 Great strength
 Superior performance
 Economical
 Low initial cost
 Fast construction
 Recycling of existing materials

5. RESULTS AND DICUSSION

Chart – 1: Traffic volume Data on Pala - Vaikom road
5.1 TRAFFIC SURVEY

Traffic volume is the number of vehicles crossing a section of

road per unit time at any selected period. Manual count
method is adopted. Traffic volume counts were carried out at
various homogeneous sections of the route.

5.1.1 ADOPTED PASSENGER CAR UNITS (PCU)

VALUES

PCU is a measure of relative space requirements of a vehicle

class compared to that of a passenger car under a specified
set of roadway, traffic and other conditions.

Table.5.1 PCU Factor

SL. VEHICLE TYPE PCU FACTOR Chart – 2: Traffic volume Data on Pala – Thodupuzha
NO. parallel road.

1 Car 1.0
2 Mini bus, Light truck 1.5
3 Standard bus, Medium 3.0
truck

4 Two wheelers, Cycle 0.5

5 Auto Rickshaw 1.0
6 Agriculture Tractor 4.0

7 Cycle Rickshaw 2.0

5.1.2 TRAFFIC VOLUME DATA

Chart – 3: Traffic volume Data on Kottayam – Thodupuzha
The data collected from PALA junction was tabulated and
parallel road.
analysed for:

 Traffic volume data.

5.2 CALIFORNIA BEARING RATIO TEST
 Volume – time graph from the tabulated.
California Bearing Ratio test is conducted in
laboratory. This tests provides the load penetration
resistance of soil. CBR value is obtained by measuring the
relationship between force and penetration when a

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cylindrical plunger is made to penetrate the soil at a 5.4 PROCTOR’S TEST

standard rate. The CBR test is used for the evaluation of
subgrade strength of roads and pavements. The CBR value This soil compaction test also called as Proctor test is used
obtained by this test is used with the empirical curves to for the determination of the mass of dry soil per cubic meter
determine the thickness of pavement and its component when the soil is compacted over a range of moisture
layers. This is the most widely used method for the design of contents, giving the maximum dry density at optimum
flexible pavement. Even though provision of subsoil drains moisture content. Thus this test provides the compaction
reduces the effect of water on subgrade, fully soaked CBR characteristics of different soils with change in moisture
tests shall be considered to be appropriate for road content. This is achieved by densification of soil by reducing
construction projects. the air voids. The degree of is measured in terms of its dry
density of soil. The dry density is maximum at the optimum
Table.5.2 Test result of soil with cement water content.

MIX DETAILS PERCENTAGE Table 5.4 Standard proctors’ values

SOIL+3% CEMENT 97.3%
SOIL+5%CEMENT 125.41% SI. DETAILS OF MIX OPTIMUM MAXIMUM
SOIL+7%CEMENT 94.09% NO MOISTURE DRY
CONTENT DENSITY(g/cc)
(%)
From this it’s concluded that CBR value maximum obtained at
1 SOIL+3%CEMENT 6.of 85 1.89
soil + 5% cement is 125.41%, which having a good subgrade
2 SOIL+5%CEMENT 9.90 1.99
strength. So 5% cement with soil is adopted for the
stabilization of sub base layer. 3 SOIL+7%CEMENT 8.45 1.91

From this it can be inferred that soil +5% attain maximum

values.

6. PAVEMENT DESIGN

Pavement structural design is a crucial aspect and should be

an integral part of all the stages of a project .Guidelines for
design of flexible pavements are IRC: 37 - 2012 and AASHTO
guidelines.
n
N = 365 x [(1+ r) – 1] x A x D x F
r

• N= the cumulative number of standard axles to

be catered for in the design in terms of msa
• A= the initial traffic in the year of completion of
construction in terms of number of commercial
Chart -4: CBR vehicles per day
• D= lane distribution factor
5.3 TEST ON SOIL • F= vehicle damage factor
• n= design life in years
Table.5.3 test results on soil • r= annual growth rate of commercial vehicles

SL.NO TEST RESULTS 6.1 COMPUTATION OF DESIGN TRAFFIC

1 GRAIN SIZE UNIFORMITY
ANALYSIS COEFFICIENT=3.03 DATA:
COEFFICIENT OF
GRADATION=0.98 • Initial traffic, A= 377.88 CV/day
2 CONSISTENCY LIQUID LIMIT=19.68% • Design CBR of subgrade soil= 15%
LIMIT PLASTIC LIMIT=14.6% • Design life, n = 20 years
3 STANDARD OPTIMUM MOISTURE • Vehicle damage factor, F= 3.5 ( standard axles
PROCTOR’S TEST CONTENT=17.5% perCV)
MAXIMUM DRY • TRAFFIC growth rate per annum, r = 7.5%
DENSITY=1.7g/cc
4 CBR 15%

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DESIGN CALCULATIONS: 2) Study mafia, a seminar report on Soil cement,

studymafia.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/02/civil-
• Distribution factor= 0.5 (as per IRC 37- 2001, Soil-cement-report.pdf
clause 3.3.5 for two lane carriage way)
n
3) R. Shiromani Et.al “Study of soil cement stabilization
N = 365 x [(1+ r) – 1] x A x D x F for pavement based course and subgrade”,
r International Journal of Engineering Research &
• A = P*(1+r)x Management Technology, volume 2-Issue 2, (135-
20
139), March 2015
• N = 365 x[(1+ 0.075) – 1] x 377.8 x 0.5 x 3.5
0.075 4) Abu Siddique and bipradas rajbongshi, “Mechanical
= 10 msa Properties of a cement stabilized coastal soil for use
in Road construction”, Journal of civil engineering
 For Granular Base and Granular Sub base. the institution of Engineers”, Volume CE 30, NO. 1,
 Use IRC 37:2012 Total pavement thickness for CBR 2002
15% and traffic 10 msa from IRC:37 2012 plate 8 =
530 mm 5) Costas A.Anagnostopoulus (2004), “Physical and
 Pavement composition can be obtained by Engineering properties of a cement stabilized soft
interpolation from Pavement Design Catalogue (IRC: soil treated with Acrylic Resin additive”,
37 2012). www.ejge.com
(a)Bituminous surfacing = 40 mm SDBC + 40 mm DBM
(b) Road-base = 250 mm WBM 6) Highway Engineering Textbook by S.K. Khanna,
(c) Sub-base = 200 mm granular material C.E.G. Justo Code provisions of IRC SP: 89-2010
of CBR not less than 15 % “Guidelines for Soil and Granular material
stabilization using cement, lime, fly ash”, Indian
 For Soil – Cement road pavement. Road Congress, November 2010
 k value = 200
 Fatigue Factor = 12 7) Ms Neetu B Ramteke, Anil Kumar Saxena,
(a)Sub base thickness = 5.1 in. “Stabilization of black cotton soil with sand and
= 5.1*25.4 cement as a subgrade for pavement”, IJESRT, June
= 129.54 mm 2014, 688-692
=130 mm
8) Ms Neetu B Ramteke, Anil Kumar Saxena,
(b) Bituminous surfacing = 40 mm SDBC + 40 mm
“Stabilization of black cotton soil with sand and
DBM
cement as a subgrade for pavement”, IJESRT, June
(c) Road-base = 250 mm WBM
2014, 688-692.
(d) Overall thickness = 460 mm
9) Hadj Bekki Et.al, “Durability of treated silty soil
7. CONCLUSION using lime and cement in road construction – A
comparative study”, the online Journal of science
The design is done as per the recommendation of the IRC and technology, Vol (2) Issue (5), 23-31.
37:2012 and guidelines of AASHTO pavement design. The
CBR value obtained for subgrade soil is 15 %, which is 10) Swapan Kumar Bagui, “Pavement Design for rural
having a good subgrade strength. Maximum CBR value is low volume roads using cement and lime treatment
obtained when soil is mixed with 5 % cement. And the base”, Jordan Journal of Civil Engineering, Volume 6,
obtained CBR value is 125.41 %. The overall thickness No 3 – 2012, 293-303.
obtained for the ordinary road pavement is 530 mm and for
soil cement road it is 460 mm. Thus there is a reduction of 70 11) SS. Asadi, Kunati.Lahari and Koka.Sai Madhulika,
mm is achieved, which makes the road construction of road Analysis of Soil Quality for Environmental Impact
pavement using Soil Cement is more economical. Thus it can Assessment-A Model Study. International Journal of
be As compared to the flexible pavement cost, the soil Civil Engineering and Technology, 8(3), 2017, pp.
cement have low initial cost of construction. 798-805

REFERENCES

1) Indian Roads network from Wikipedia the free

encyclopedia,Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org./w
iki/Indian_road_network

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