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Received Aug 21, 2017; Revised Jan 18, 2018; Accepted Jan 28, 2018
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1. Introduction
Black cotton soils are boon to agriculture but are proved to be serious threat to construction founded on it. These soils have the property of high swelling due to imbibing of water in monsoon and shrinkage due to evaporation of water in summer seasons. This swelling and shrinkage nature is attributed to the presence of mineral montmorillonite. Because of this high swelling and shrinkage nature, the structures constructed on these soils experience cracks, making it unsuitable for foundation. Hence there is a need for improving black cotton soil to suite as foundation material.
Over the past few decades, stabilization is found to be the best technique for reducing the swelling and shrinkage nature of black cotton soil. Various researchers had tried stabilizing black cotton soil using lime, cement, fly ash, rich husk ash, etc. [1–5]. Of these, lime stabilization is one of the techniques which is in use for stabilizing black cotton soil from the past few decades. Use of lime reduces the high plasticity of black cotton and makes it workable. Also reaction between lime and soil makes the soil-lime mixture more strength resistant [1]. But in recent days, the cost of lime has increased. This resulted in increase of cost of lime stabilization of soil [2]. Also in the present study, an attempt is made in stabilizing the black cotton soil with lime which turned out to be unsuitable as subbase material. Hence the need for alternative and cost-effective materials has aroused.
Brick powder, a waste material available in abundance at brick kilns, is rich in silica and is available free of cost. Chemical analysis of brick powder showed rich composition of silica of about 55% along with minor compositions of iron oxide (8%), aluminum oxide (15%), calcium oxide (7%), magnesium oxide (2%), and sulfur trioxide (1%) [6]. Brick powder is being successfully used in mortar and concrete making from the past few decades. It is reported that utilization of 25% brick powder in concrete making resulted in adequate...