Improving hydro-mechanical behavior of loess by a bio-strategy

Abstract

Loess is widely distributed all over the world, covering about 10% of the land surface on earth. China is one of the countries with the most serious loess soil erosion in the world, especially the loess plateau. This is mainly related to the poor water stability and mechanical properties of the loess. A new coupling method of bio-cementation (Microbially Induced Calcite Precipitation: MICP) and sand additive to improve the hydro-mechanical behavior of loess was proposed. The feasibility, coupling improvement mechanism and the effects of sand content, bio-cement treatment cycle and cementation solution (CS) concentration were investigated through a series of tests. The results indicated that the proposed method was effective to improve the water stability and structure strength of loess. The coupling improvement performance were positively related to the sand content. When the sand content was 40%, compared to bio-cement treatment, the coupling treatment was 9 times deeper in treatment depth, 3.5 times stronger in peak structure strength, and the sum slaking rate was less than half. The coupling improvement mechanism can be attributed to the form of the double layers including hard crust and cemented layer. With the addition of sand, the thickness, structure strength and water stability of the double layers increased. The main reason is that there were more interfacial voids between sand particles and loess particles, increasing the permeability of loess and treatment depth, forming more amount of calcium carbonates. Based on the experimental condition in this study, 1.0 M of CS concentration was the optimal spaying strategy to improve the hydro-mechanical properties of loess.

Keywords

Loess / Erosion resistance / MICP / Sand additive / Water stability / Structure strength

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Chaosheng Tang is an editorial board member for Biogeotechnics and was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41925012, 422307100, 42007244), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BK20211087), the Open Fund of State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection (Grant No. SKLGP2021K013), and the Project of Doctor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Jiangsu Province (Grant No. JSSCBS20210029).

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