Microstructures within and outside the smear zones for soft clay improvement using PVD only, Vacuum-PVD, Thermo-PVD and Thermo-Vacuum-PVD

Abstract Previous investigators have found increasing rates odf consolidation with increasing degrees of soft clay improvement using PVD only, Vacuum-PVD, Thermo-PVD and Thermo-Vacuum-PVD). This paper utilized scanning electron microscope (SEM) to evaluate and compare the microstructures of the clay specimens obtained from within the smear zone of both undisturbed and reconstituted samples in small consolidometer as well from within and outside the smear zone of reconstituted samples in large consolidometer. Before improvement, both reconstituted and undisturbed specimens showed anisotropic microstructures. In reconstituted specimen, face to face preferred orientations are revealed parallel to the horizontal plane. Meanwhile, in the undisturbed specimen, some degree of random edge to face mixed with face to face orientations were displayed. After improvement, the microstructures of Thermo-Vacuum-PVD revealed high levels of edge to face orientation in the vertically dominated smear zone, followed by Thermo-PVD, Vacuum-PVD, and PVD only. Moreover, the microstructures of specimens in the horizontally dominated outside of smear zone exhibited mainly face to face orientation and progressively mixed with edge to face orientation. The increasing intensities of edge to face microstructures were successfully correlated with increasing flow parameters and measured shear strengths corresponding to the increasing levels of improvement.