Effect of Oxidation on the Compression Behaviour of Organic Soils

Abstract

Organic soils and peat soils are widely distributed across the world, particularly in the Northern hemisphere in countries like Canada and Russia having 170 and 150 million hectares respectively and in tropical regions such as Indonesia and Malaysia, which contain 26 million and 3 million hectares respectively. Organic soils and peat are considered problematic materials for construction. Due to their high water content and high compressibility, they are unsuitable material to support any foundation and other type of loading in their natural state. However, as population grows every year, land becomes scarce and the need to use this land for agriculture or construction is rising. In practice, these waterlogged soils are drained before any potential usage for construction. However, drainage requires significant time and leads to settlements or subsidence. Subsidence in organic soilsmay cause damage or high maintenance costs to buildings and infrastructure or require significant amount of materials to raise or maintain surface level, which may be costly or have significant environmental impact. Subsidence of peat also occurs in rural areas. Peat meadows are drained through networks of ditches and waterways to enable farming or agriculture. These waterways require regular dredging to keep them open from plant growth and prevent them to fil up with partly degraded organic matter. In this project ‘Lift up Lowlands’ the potential of using these dredged organic sediments to compensate surface subsidence in peatlands is investigated…