Enhancing Durability of Stabilized Soils for Resilient Transportation Infrastructure Under Extreme Weather Conditions

Soil stabilization, especially of expansive clays, frost susceptible soils, and weak coastal sands, is critical to civil infrastructure such as embankment, roadways, rail tracks, and foundations. Despite a good body of knowledge regarding the formation and properties of stabilization products, a significant knowledge gap related to the long-term durability of stabilization products still exists. Specifically, long-term degradation due to cyclic moisture-temperature changes and environment induced pH fluctuations presents important challenges. This challenge becomes more evident in the future due to climate extremes such as severe flooding from major storm events, longer heat waves, and unforeseeable freezing-thawing cycles. The current state of the practice is largely limited to general observations and is clearly lacking with regards to accurate understanding and resulting adaptation/mitigation strategies. This knowledge gap is primarily related to the highly environment-dependent multiphysical characteristics and complex multiscale aspects between constituents, properties, microstructure, and processing. The goal of this project is to develop fundamentally sound experimental-forensic methods that can better identify and understand the degradation of stabilized soils. This project is thus directly related to National Center for Infrastructure Transformation's (NCIT’s) focus area of “Improving the Durability and Extending the Life of Transportation Infrastructure” and in particular for the NCIT’s topical pillar: Infrastructure Durability & Resilience. This project will vastly impact the current practice by enhance long-term durability of the stabilized soils which will lead to more resilient infrastructure systems.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $549999
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3552344813

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  National Center for Infrastructure Transformation

  Prairie View A&M University
  Prairie View, TX  United States  77446
• Performing Organizations:

  Texas A&M University, College Station

  Zachry Department of Civil Engineering
  3136 TAMU
  College Station, TX  United States  77843-3136

  Michigan State University, East Lansing

  Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
  Institute for Community Development
  East Lansing, MI  United States  48824-1226
• Principal Investigators:

  Little, Dallas

  Cetin, Bora

• Start Date: 20230901
• Expected Completion Date: 20250831
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program
• Source Data: 01-13-TAMU

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Climate change adaptation; Degradation (Thermodynamics); Soil stabilization
• Subject Areas: Geotechnology; Highways; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01893173
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: National Center for Infrastructure Transformation
• Contract Numbers: 69A3552344813
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Sep 13 2023 1:36PM