STUDY ON CORRELATION OF DIFFERENT PEAT SOIL GEOTECHNICAL AND INDEX PROPERTIES

• Main Author: JENNYFER, JOYS JOHN
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English; English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, (UNIMAS) 2020
• Subjects: TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/36698/1/STUDY%20ON%20CORRELATION%20OF%20DIFFERENT%20PEAT%20SOIL%2024pgs.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/36698/4/STUDY%20ON%20CORRELATION%20OF%20DIFFERENT%20PEAT%20SOIL%20ft.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/36698/

Peatlands are spread across 2.4 million hectares in Malaysia and 1,65 million hectares in Sarawak and smaller regions in the Asian Peninsula and North Borneo. Peat is regarded within the building industry as one of the most troublesome soil. Construction on peat soils has proven to be a challenge for civil engineers as this type of soil has very low bearing capacity and is heavily settled. This situation could trigger potential problems with the structure’s stability. High organic content, high water content, high void ratio and high peat compressibility characteristics also naturally affect the impact of uneven subgrade settlement ground surfaces. It has caused damage to buildings and infrastructure structures. In this study, the correlation of geotechnical properties and shear strength of peat soils was studied by gathering the data from past researchers. Geotechnical properties test for this study is done by using the peat samples that taken form Kampung Meranek, Sarawak. From the result, data attained was then gathered with other tropical peat data from literature review in order to study on correlating parameters relationship. The result show that, the value of organic content, fiber content and moisture content decreases as the degree of humifcation increases. Also the results show that, the organic content increases as the specific gravity decreases and as the bulk density increases, the lower the organic content. Moisture content affect both compression index and organic content by showing increasing data trend. From all the result, the correlation between compression index and moisture content has shown the best correlation with the R2 value of 0.90 which is good. The shear strength of the peat was also studied in this research. From several results, the shear strength of the peat increases as the curing period increases. Most of the peat reached its maximum strength at 28 days. From the empirical equation, it is proven that the shear strength of the peat also increases as the percentage of binder’s increases. Binder alone shown to have lower shear strength compared to cement stabilized peat mixed with other types of binders.