Relative Comparison of Stabilizer for Soil Block

We know cement, bitumen, lime and industrial by-products are used as stabilizers. Of these cement is most popular and used extensively. Soil that is stabilized with lime show less water resistant and less strength relative to stabilization with cement.

But both types of block can be produced; here more perfect word is compacted by Cinva Ram. Now what is Cinva Ram? It is a block making device, obviously block of stabilized soil.

Now we will learn about some block making devices. We have already introduced Cinva Ram other popular devices are

-Balram

-Astram

-Ellson block master.

Of these Astram can produce about 500 blocks on average. Production rate of Balram is about 1000 blocks. Again production means pressing stabilizer soil to desire shape, size and expected pressure.

The block size can be pressed by Astram is 23X19X8 cm, that of Balram is 23X11X7.5 cm.

The purposes of stabilizing are

-To increase bearing strength of soil block

-To improve their resistance against moisture or water

All stabilizers improve these properties more or less, one can improve strength but may have poor performance against water repellent property, some perform fair in both properties of block. Cement bricks are produced by treating soil generally with 5% cement and bitumen-treated bricks are stabilized by 1% bitumen.

The strength and moisture repellent property will be our concern here. Cement stabilized bricks have better strength but have poor performance in water/moisture resistance in relation to bitumen stabilized blocks. In our last part we learnt that cement blocks are both stronger and more water/moisture resistant than lime stabilized block.

The bearing strength of cement block and bitumen block are respectively 4 N/mm² and 3N/mm².

So where water resistance is the primary criteria we should go for bitumen as stabilizer and where strength is main criteria we should go for cement as stabilizer.

The promotion of soil block is patronized by ASTRA (Association of Science and Technology for Rural Area) at Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and NBO RHDC both of Bangalore. They played most important role in introducing soil block as building construction materials in Karnataka.

CBRI, Roorkee have conducted extensive experiment over bitumen stabilized block to decrease quantity of bitumen by replacing industrial by-products like bagasee and flyash. They found that with the application of by-product as additive bitumen quantity of bitumen can be reduced up to 0.5% from 1.0% as usual as stated above. Rice husk has been tried also for stabilizing soil and found promising results. Dear reader we have discussed about rice husk as pozzolana for concrete in previous post.