Soil Mixing
Soil Mixing involves the use of mixing heads to inject lime, cement and reagents directly into soft soils to improve structural properties and remediate contaminated land in situ.
Two main methods of In Situ Soil Mixing are provided by BBGE namely:
- Deep Soil Mixing and
- Shallow Soil Mixing
Deep Soil Mixing
Utitlising our powerful THW rotary drilling rigs, lime or lime / cement columns are installed through an auger stem attached to track mounted silos with computer operated compressor unit to control flow rates. A large variety of auger sizes are available to achieve the column widths and depths required.
In inorganic soils the injection of dry lime acts to stabilise ground by bonding soil particles together to stiffen and increase soil strength. In soft organic soils such as peats, silts and clays vibro replacement methods can often be unsuitable and the presence of contaminants make piling costs prohibitive. In such ground conditions lime / cement mixes can be used as an alternative for increasing bearing capacity.
In addition to structural improvement the introduction of cement/clay and site specific chemical reagents act to form cut-off barriers to block contaminant pathways and remediate pollutants.
Shallow Soil Mixing
Shallow soil mixing equipment comprises a main mixing head attached to a modified excavator used to break up the ground and inject binding materials into the soils. The shallow method enables fast and effective mass stabilisation and remediation of contaminanted land to depths up to 5m. Trials and laboratory tests are undertaken to determine whether soil mixing is appropriate for the required loading requirements and to determine the mix and chemicals needed for remediation.
