ASSESSMENT OF SOIL MIXING WITH CEMENT KILN DUST TO REDUCE SOIL LATERAL PRESSURE COMPARED TO OTHER SOIL IMPROVEMENT METHODS

The soil lateral earth pressure acting on retaining or wing walls of hydraulic structures is considered the most influential loads in its structural design. The general properties of the soil foundation and backfill soil are the factors that control the cost of engineering design of these retaining or wing walls. In order to improve the mechanical properties of the backfill soil, which is reflected on the cost of new buildings or addresses soil problems of existing structures, this research compares between different soil improvement methods, to select the most effective method can easily be applied for these kinds of structures. Many field tests were carried out to compare the retaining wall lateral resistance to backfill soil using medium sand soils as backfill material processed in all examined cases. These cases are filling sand using common compaction specifications, sand filled gabions, geogrid soil reinforcement and soil mixing with cement kiln dust. The results of experiments showed that, using gabions is the most efficient solutions compared to other studied methods to optimize retaining walls design. In addition, soil- cement dust mix can also be used as an efficient solution with the advantage of improving soil backfill of existing retaining walls.