EFFECT OF OIL CONTAMINATION ON BEARING CAPACITY AND SLOPE STABILITY OF COHESIVE AND COHESIONLESS SOILS

Abstract

In the recent years, the treatment of contaminated soils has been given importance due to reclamation of polluted sites in the industrial areas. One of the common sources of contamination is by oil spills and leakages. The shear strength and bearing capacity properties of the soil will be seriously affected due to the oil contamination which leads to increase in the foundation cost and environmental pollution. In the present study, it is proposed to investigate the variations in the bearing capacity of soil with various percentages of oil contamination. The bearing capacities were analyzed with respect to shallow and deep foundations. The percentage reduction in the bearing capacities with respect to oil content were compared among three different soil types such as poorly graded sand (SP), silty sand (SM) and low plasticity clay (CL). It was observed that the decrease in bearing capacity with oil content was high for CL when compared with other two soils. For CL, the shear strength parameters were severely affected at lower oil contents than other two soils. The effect of oil content on shear strength parameters was more on SM than SP. The slope stability analysis was also performed on the soils and was observed that the factor of safety is reduced upto 50% and the reduction is more for CL when compared to other two soils. The reason may be due to the drastic decrease in cohesion of this soil with oil content.