Improving Soil Quality

Ground improvement: In recent experimental research on Aeolian sand from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Susana showed that when sand is mixed with different additives its bearing capacity is improved. The research showed that dune sand was improved by the addition of cement. A new testing procedure to evaluate the mixture’s bearing capacity has been proposed. A paper on this research was published in Construction and Building Materials (October 2017); follow-up papers are in progress.

Susana also explored the influence of fly ash (pulverised fuel ash) on the improvement of poorly-graded sandy material, when activated with cement. The study focused on establishing the optimum quantity of fly ash content for stabilisation of this type of soil, and on the effects of such soil improvement techniques on the bearing capacity, measured through CBR tests. For this project she worked with and supervised PhD student Siavash Mahvash (University of West London). They published journal papers in Science Direct’s Heliyon (March 2017) and in Proceedings of the ICE – Ground Improvement (October 2017).

Susana co-supervised PhD student Pedro Navas (University of Castilla La Mancha, Spain), working on mesh-free coupled numerical models in soil mechanics. Navas developed a computational code to simulate high strain problems in dry and saturated soil under different loadings. Susana and her colleagues will now apply the same code to other problems, such as the installation of piles. Two papers have been published on this research in Computers and Geotechnics – another three papers will shortly be published.