Effect of Tung Oil on Mechanical Behavior of Silica Sand

Abstract

Cemented sands have great potential as construction materials compared with clean sand due to the higher strength, but they have insignificant environmental benefits such as high embodied energy and carbon footprint. To provide an environmentally friendly, cost effective and reliable method to create an engineered soil, this study investigated on how Tung oil affects the mechanical behavior (strength and stress-strain behavior) of silica sand. Sand is mixed with a certain concentration (5%) of Tung oil. Heating could accelerate the equilibration of Tung oil-sand mixture and may contribute to the increase of mechanical strength compared with those at normal temperature condition. Therefore, conventional unconfined uniaxial compression tests are performed on sample equilibrated at 60 ℃ for different durations of heating. The Tung oil-sand mixture was found to exhibit (1) brittle failure under compression, (2) shorter time of equilibration and increasing compressive strength with longer duration of heating within 14 days.