A Study on Strength Characteristics of Sea Beach Sand Stabilized with Lime and Fly Ash

Construction and strengthening of highways and other roads is on the top of the agenda of the Government for the sustenance of the growing economy. Bitumen being the most commonly used pavement material; its demand is reaching about 5.5 million tons per year. As such the bitumen is becoming scarce and its availability is dependent upon the Indian/foreign oil refineries. The cost of bitumen is also on the rise due to its continuously increasing demand. Construction and strengthening of highways and other roads is on the top of the agenda of the Government for the sustenance of the growing economy. In this context, an investigation was taken up to examine the possibilities of the use of sea beach sand treated with lime and flyash; as a low cost alternative pavement material for the road construction. This paper presents the results of laboratory tests conducted on sea beach sand sampled from West coast beach of Karwar in Karnataka state. It was observed from the results that the lime-flyash treatment improves the strength characteristics of the sea beach sand. The UCS and CBR values of sand-lime-flyash mixture were found to increase with increase in the lime-flyash percentages. This trend was observed to be more pronounced with increased curing period of the mixture.