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Homogeneity and mechanical behaviors of sands improved by a temperature-controlled one-phase MICP method

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Abstract

Microbially induced carbonate precipitation (MICP) has been actively investigated as a promising method to improve soil properties. A burning issue impeding its wide application is the severe spatial inhomogeneity of the CaCO3 distribution. Inspiring by the temperature sensitivity of the bacteria activity, a temperature-controlled one-phase MICP method is proposed consisting of two major steps: (1) grouting the specimen with the mixture of cementation and bacteria solutions in a low temperature; (2) inducing CaCO3 precipitation by exposing the specimen to room temperature. A series of experiments are conducted to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method over the normal two-phase MICP method. Specimens treated with the proposed temperature-controlled method present higher CaCO3 contents with a roughly uniform distribution along the height of the specimen; the strength of those specimens are substantially improved with apparent dilatancy due to the effective bond network formed by the homogeneously distributed CaCO3 precipitation. SEM images indicate that the temperature-controlled method tends to form small crystals distributing uniformly on the grain surface, which may increase the roughness of the grain and the residual stress more effectively.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41831282, 51922024 and 52078085) and Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing, China (Grant No. cstc2019jcyjjqX0014). T. Matthew Evans was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (Grant No. CMMI-1933355) during this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of New Technology for Construction of Cities in Mountain Area, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400045, China

    Yang Xiao, Huanran Wu & Hanlong Liu

  2. School of Civil Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400045, China

    Yang Xiao, Yang Wang, Chang Zhao, Huanran Wu & Hanlong Liu

  3. Institute of Geotechnical Engineering, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria

    Shun Wang

  4. School of Civil and Construction Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

    T. Matthew Evans & Armin W. Stuedlein

  5. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    Jian Chu

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  1. Yang Xiao
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Xiao, Y., Wang, Y., Wang, S. et al. Homogeneity and mechanical behaviors of sands improved by a temperature-controlled one-phase MICP method. Acta Geotech. 16, 1417–1427 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-020-01122-4

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