Durability and Micromechanism of Submarine Silt Stabilized by the GS Agent.

Due to the particularity of marine environment and submarine silt, the durability of stabilized submarine silt is one of the greatest concerns in application. Taking the ground improvement project of submarine silt in a certain project in Hong Kong as the reinforcement object, this paper studies the durability of submarine silt stabilized by a novel binder (called GS agent, G and S are the initials of gypsum and slag, respectively), and compares it with cement stabilized soil. Unconfined compression tests were conducted to investigate the strength attenuation of stabilized soils under dry-wet cycle and sulfate soaking. The results showed that the corrosion resistance coefficient of GS stabilized soil under dry-wet cycle was about 1.05 to 1.10 times that of the cement stabilized soil. Under sulfate attack, the cement stabilized soil completely disintegrated, while the GS stabilized soil still had a certain strength with corrosion resistance coefficients of 18.6% to 71.2%. Increasing the binder cement and curing time were beneficial to improving the durability of stabilized soil. Meanwhile, scanning electron microscopy backscatter (BES) test and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis were conducted to investigate the micro mechanism of durability of soils stabilized by GS agent and cement. It is found that the GS stabilized soil had a high degree of hydration, less porosity and more stable structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]