An Example of Cement Stabilization Application in Railway Systems (Aladdin-Adliye Tramway)

The subbase and base layers of the road and railway should be designed to be the most economical and should provide criteria such as bearing capacity, settlement and permeability during service life. Today, cement stabilization is widely used in improving the soil properties when the criteria are not met. In this study, the quality control tests of stabilized filling and cement stabilization applied in the construction area of Konya Aladdin-Adliye tramway line and application details of cement stabilization along the route have been given. At the quality control experiments of stabilized materials and the preparation of cement mixture, the points specified in the Technical Specifications for Highways (TSH) have been taken into consideration. Due to the presence of the tramway route in a historic area, it was not allowed to improve by deep excavation and requested to make an improvement so as not to deform the historic remains. Plate loading tests were carried out for the current situation at certain intervals along the route. In locations where have high values of settlement, soil properties have been improved by cement stabilization. The most important factor in cement stabilization is to find the most suitable cement and water ratio. For this reason, in order to determine the appropriate cement ratio according to the TSH, the optimum water content of the material used in stabilize layer has been determined. By considering this value, mixtures were prepared at different cement ratios and the mixture was compressed in CBR mold to obtain cylinder samples. The unconfined compressive strengths of the these samples were measured and the cement-to-water ratio was obtained which provided the upper and lower unconfined compressive strength limits specified in the TSH. Improvement was made in the route base layer using a cementitious mixture with the determined optimum cement-water ratio. After the application, samples were taken, quality control experiments were carried out.