Effect of drying-wetting cycles on the durability of calcareous sand reinforced by MICP and recycled shredded coconut coir (RSC)

Abstract

Microbial-induced carbonate precipitation (MICP) technique has been adopted in geotechnical engineering widely. In this study, the effect of drying-wetting cycles on MICP-recycled shredded coconut coir (RSC) reinforced calcareous sand was studied, and the deterioration mechanism under drying-wetting cycles was revealed. Test results indicated that drying-wetting cycles exert an important influence on the durability of MICP-RSC reinforced specimens. With the increase of drying-wetting cycles N, the specimens demonstrated significant increase in mass loss rate and critical void ratio, decrease in maximum shear modulus, peak strength and toughness. Furthermore, an increase in the initial relative density reduced the deterioration of MICP-RSC reinforced specimens exposed to drying-wetting cycles. Higher initial relative density of the specimen correlates with an increased maximum shear modulus, peak stress and toughness, a decreased in permeability and critical void ratio. Microanalysis revealed that the generated calcium carbonate adhering to sand particles and RSC gradually dropped off with the increase of N, weakened cementation, and led to the deterioration of MICP-RSC reinforced specimens, which is consistent with the deterioration characteristics under drying-wetting cycles.

Keywords

Microbial induced carbonate precipitation (MICP) / Recycled shredded coconut coir (RSC) / Drying-wetting cycles / Initial relative density / Durability characters

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. Hailei Kou is an editorial board member for Biogeotechnics and was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article.

Acknowledgements

The funding support from the National Natural Science Foundations of China (No. 52171282; 41831280) and Shandong Provincial Key Research and Development Plan, China (No. 2021ZLGX04), are gratefully acknowledged. The work is also supported by Taishan Scholars of Shandong Province, China (No. tsqn202306098).

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