Mass Stabilization, Stability and Settlement in Mass Stabilized Peat

Peat is badly suited as a base for road and railway embankments due to its geotechnical properties. The usual procedure has been, therefore, to excavate peat and replace it with blasted rock. During mass stabilization, the peat is left behind and its geotechnical properties are improved through mixing with a chemical stabilizer, preferably cement or cement in combination with different by-products from industrial processes. The goal is to create a monolith (block) of strengthened peat, which equally spreads out the load from the embankment to deeper lying soil layers. The monolith requires a certain strength, compressibility and homogeneity to manage this task. The surroundings in which the created monolith works are often fairly acidic and for this reason a stabilization performed with the mentioned stabilizers is not doubtless constant over a period equal to the road - railway technical lifetime. The objective of this study was to increase our knowledge and understanding of stabilized peat, to create suitable stability and settlement analyses for mass stabilization and to determine which field and laboratory investigation methods are suitable for determination of the shear strength of mass stabilized peat.