Journal de génie civil et environnemental

Study of Behavioural Change in the Soil Contaminated with Petrol

Abstract

Akshay Chaudhary and Amanpreet Singh

One of the legacies of the past in industrialized countries is that land has been contaminated due to mining, industry and society disposing of waste with little regard for future consequences. Contamination of the soil layers forms one of the major topics of Environmental Geo-technology. The accidental spillage or leakage of highly aggressive industrial effluents has detrimental effects on the properties of soil. The addition of these effluents in to the subsoil directly affects the use and stability of the supported structure. In the present day Geotechnical engineering, little consideration has been given to the potential influence of physico-chemical interactions on the mechanical performance of soil confronted with increasing occurrence of soil contamination. The modern construction requires a detailed study of the foundation material as well as its working during the course of lifetime of the structure supported by it. In this study, an experimental investigation is done to quantify the influence of contamination in two different types of locally available soils i.e. sand (SP) and clay (CL-ML), so as to understand the engineering behaviour of the soil under the effect of pollutants. Therefore, due to the multitude of these pollutants the study was restricted to the contaminant fluid, Petrol. Through this study it has been found that, the contamination of soil with petrol has a significant influence on the engineering behaviour of the soil and the consequent change in the engineering properties of the soil has been reported in this paper.