Integrating Wood-Ash in Cement Stabilization of Highly Expansive Soils for High-rise Building Construction Focus: Reducing Shrinkage Causing Storey Subsidence after Rains in Embakasi, Kenya

Abstract

Soil stabilization has served various advantages ranging from roads constructions to building realizations. The amounts of loads that already stabilized soils have been subjected to have led to a need of ensuring long-term results would be achieved. However, the changes in climatic conditions like occurrence of rains have led to occurrence of an inevitable shrinkage and subsidence of highly costly structures like roads, bridges, and buildings. As a result, this research review aimed at identifying and proposing how to curb shrinkage occurrences on already stabilized soils by incorporating Wood Ash (WA) when using cement as a soil stabilizer. The aim of achieving a plaster-like property after soil stabilization drove the idea of incorporating WA in cement soil stabilization. A 10% WA proportion has been proposed for use after its incorporation in cement did not affect the fineness properties of cement. Again, this proportion led to an improved Compressive strength after 28-days of curing and both the CBR and PI values of stabilized soils. Much importantly, the shrinkage of elements realized with a 10% incorporation of WA in cement showed a significant reduction after soaking and testing. The achievement of the properties of WA to help reduce shrinkage in highly-expansive stabilized soils leads to proposing the integration of Wood Ash in cement soil stabilization to help curb shrinkage that may lead to subsidence of high-rise buildings realized on these soils during rainy seasons.