Recent discoveries into how certain marine organisms produce their skeletonshas provided inspiration for a new treatment method for creating cementation in bothfine and coarse-grained soils. The silicification method offers environmental andphysical advantages over some traditional methods by utilizing non-toxic,commercially available components with low potential for adverse environmentaleffects. Silicification begins by first pretreating the soil using a commerciallyavailable cationic polyelectrolyte which is then followed by treatment with a mixtureof commercial sodium silicate and buffer. The unconfined compressive strengths ofthree sands and one clay were measured over a range of polyelectrolyteconcentrations at a constant sodium silicate concentration of 20 percent by volume.Results indicate that polyelectrolyte type and pretreatment concentration can beoptimized to significantly increase the compressive strengths of sands and clays.Review of published data suggests that compressive strengths of samples silicified bythis approach are equal to or greater than strengths of samples prepared at comparablesilicate contents using a variety of methods.
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