Experimental study on the electrical resistivity of soil-cement admixtures

Recently in China, soil-cement is widely used to improve the soft ground in the highway construction engineering. Literature studies are mainly investigating the mechanical properties of the soil-cement, while its properties of the electrical resistivity are not well addressed. In this paper, the properties of the electrical resistivity of the reconstituted soil-cement and the in situ soil-cement columns are investigated. The test results show that the electrical resistivity of the soil-cement increases with the increase in the cement-mixing ratio and curing time, whereas it decreases with the increase in the water content, degree of saturation and water-cement ratio. A simple equation is proposed to predict the electrical resistivity of soil-cement under the condition of the specified curing time and water-cement ratio. It is found that the electrical resistivity has a good relationship with the unconfined compression strength and blow count of SPT. It is expected that the electrical resistivity method can be widely used for checking/controlling the quality of soil-cement in practice.