Review on the effect of gypsum content on soil behavior

Increasing the utilization of urban soil usage brings along very important problems to be addressed at the international level regarding the use of sulfate bearing soils as construction materials. After briefly exploring current research perspective, this paper captures the current state of the art in the field of sulfate bearing soils used as construction materials through a detailed discussion of different studies that pave the way to the possible treatment of such soils to be used in road construction. Additionally, the purpose of this paper is to acquaint geotechnical and pavement engineers with the present state of the art of the physical and chemical properties of gypsum and hence its effect on the subgrade soil performance. On the other hand, this paper discussed an opposite action in which some researchers have mixed recycled waste gypsum components with soil in order to stabilize it. In other words, a number of open research issues are highlighted with the intension of inspiring new conditions and developments in stabilizing problematic gypsiferous soil as well as adding gypsum to stabilize non gypsiferous soils of weak performance. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.