Soil Improvement with the Addition of Natural Materials Cactus Mucilage

Abstract

In civil engineering, a frequent situation arises, that of finding soils that have little resistance or are very plastic to be used in projects, so they must be improved, an ecological alternative is the procedure of improving soils through natural stabilizers such as cactus mucilage. The objective of this work is to evaluate the properties of mucilage and the effect it has on the compaction properties of the soil, belonging to Luzuriaga Street, located in the Barranca district, for which different dosages (4%, 6% and 8%) of cactus mucilage (CM) were used to this SW soil sample in accordance with SUCS and A-1-b according to AASHTO and the properties were evaluated by standard Proctor tests. The results of the cactus mucilage, exposed a humidity of 96.43% and potassium and calcium were identified as the main elements present, the viscosity was 1087.9 cSt, the density was 0.9948 g/cm³ and its pH 4.61, with respect to the properties of soil with CM they indicated that 6% mucilage is the one that results in a higher dry density of 1.90 g/cm³ and an optimal moisture content of 19.11% which means an improvement in compaction in addition to stability, as a conclusion it was stated that the cactus mucilage modifies the structure of the soil by increasing the cohesion between the particles which results in a more uniform mixture, it is also indicated that a moderate dose such as 6% optimizes the properties of the soil.