Centrifuge modelling of dynamic compaction on fly ash

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Coal is one of the major sources of energy in countries such as China, India, and the United States. The high consumption of coal with low calorific value leads to the generation of fly ash in huge quantity, which is utilized up to some extent and the rest are stored in ash ponds. Though fly ash can be used for numerous applications such as filler materials, land reclamation material, significant bearing capacity improvement is required. Also, considering the important issue of overloading and failure of ash dykes which causes significant damage to the environment, it is important to mention that the strength of deposited ash in the ponds needs to be improved before further deposition. In this study, the applicability of Dynamic Compaction (DC) on fly ash deposited in ash ponds has been investigated in a geotechnical centrifuge at 30 gravities. The model was instrumented with accelerometers which captured real-time data with a high sampling rate during the simulation. The instrumentation allowed the proper capturing of ground accelerations generated due to tamping. The test has also been further interpreted by performing Digital Image Cross-Correlation (DIC) on the images of the front elevation of the model captured during the centrifuge test. Using the DIC results, crater formations between impacts, displacement vectors and contours were plotted for qualitative assessment of the effectiveness of DC on fly ash. Through this study suitability of DC on fly ash has been investigated, and it is found that DC can effectively cause improvement in the geotechnical properties of fly ash.

9th International Congress on Environmental Geotechnics (ICEG2023)

Advances in Testing and Material Characterization