| Organic soils are mainly composed of plant and animal residues. Although they possess poor engineering properties, they are well suited for agricultural purposes. Due to gradual increase in the generation of municipal solid waste, recycling and composting of organic wastes have gained importance in recent years. Compost materials have many potential applications like landscaping, erosion control and turf management. Hence the variation of soil engineering properties of natural soil with the addition of compost materials is considered in this present research work.; Two of the locally available compost materials, biosolids compost and dairy manure compost and soil sampled from Stephenville, Texas are chosen for research. Laboratory experiments were conducted on compost materials both in their pure and amended forms to measure the properties like swell, shrinkage, undrained cohesion and consolidation. Compost amended soils have shown good results in shrinkage analysis. Amended soils also showed good strength properties when compost is mixed at lower proportions. Hence, if strength is not a major concern, utilization of compost materials can be recommended for geotechnical applications as it reduces landfilling and incineration problems. |
