Utilization of polymer stabilization for improvement of clay microstructures

•Polymer is the new strategy which formed nanocomposite materials with clay Skelton.•Nanocomposites reduced clay voids and increased the vertical yield stress.•It significantly decreased clay compressibility and induced settlement.•It produced isotropic material with less desiccation crack and high shear strength.•The clay's brittle behavior is diverted to plastic type due to nanocomposite effect.

This article illustrates the application of using polymer stabilization in creating a new nanocomposite material with clay soil. Various tests with different polymer contents were performed to study the effect of using polypropylene as a stabilizing agent on both microstructure and geotechnical clay properties. These experiments showed that the resulting nanocomposites acted as nanofiller materials which decreased the plasticity and compressibility parameters of the treated clay. The initial structural analysis helped in a better understanding of the modified microstructure and the measured size of induced nanocomposites. The constructed inclusions filled the inter-assembling pores thus notably producing a higher vertical effective yield stress which again reduced the volumetric shrinkage and created isotropic and compressible materials with a lesser extent of desiccation cracks. It also increased the tensile and the shear strength of the stabilized clay with an increase of the nanocomposite size. This technique can be effectively used for road embankments and slope stabilization.