IMPROVEMENT OF SOIL BEHAVIOR BY MICROBIAL INDUCED CALCITE PRECIPITATES

Nowadays, the recent development of cities leads to construction of many high rise buildings which needs a strong and good foundation. So, it is important to improve the properties of soil. The process of improving the properties of soil is known as soil stabilization. In recent days, chemical methods are widely used for treating soil to improve the properties. In addition to that of chemical methods, an attempt has been made using micro-organisms, nutrients that are naturally present in subsurface soil which precipitate calcites to improve the engineering properties of soil in sustainable way. In this process, a species bacillusgroup, B.megaterium was used to activate and catalyze the calcite precipitation by adding reagents to it. This is made on the soil sample that had taken from Pachapalayam, Coimbatore. The concentration of cementation reagents and duration of treatment are the two parameters included in this project. The results in this project showed that with the use of MICP (microbial induced calcite precipitates), there was an increment in strength of soil. However, to adopt the microbial methods effectively, microbiological, ecological studies and design considerations are required.