Compressibility and strength behavior of marine soils solidified with MgO—A green and low carbon binder

Although extensive research has been conducted on the soil solidification with traditional binders such as lime and cement, there has been less emphasis on the mechanical behavior of marine soils solidified with a novel type of binder MgO. The experimental tests were performed to investigate the strength and compressibility behavior of MgO-solidified soils, taking into consideration curing time and MgO content. The results show that the yielding stress tends to increase with curing time and MgO content, but drops as the initial void ratio e0 and void ratio ey at increase. The incorporation of MgO leads to an important reduction in compression index Cc and recompression index Cr. The unconfined test analysis indicates that an increasing trend can be observed for unconfined compressive strength qu and deformation modulus E50 when evaluating the effect of curing time and MgO content, accompanied by a decrease in failure strain εf and a slight drop of qu at 28 days. The improvement of mechanical performance is attributed to the hydration process of MgO with water, producing an alkaline environment and precipitation of Mg(OH)2. Based on the confined and unconfined compression test results, an effort is made to establish the correlations between characteristic parameters, including Cc vs. e0, vs. e0, vs. ey, qu vs. εf, and qu vs. E50.