Stabilizing Marginal Soils With Fibers and Chemicals for Roadways and Airports

Alaska is well-known as a land of extremes. Extreme cold, long summer days and long winter nights, large mountain ranges and the lditarod Sled Dog Race all come to mind. But another extreme is the high cost of gravel in western Alaska . There is little gravel in the lower Yukon and Kuskokwim river regions; the soils are dominated by sands, silts, and clays. To build a road-or just about any structure-gravel must be barged from hundreds of miles at a cost of $200-$600 per cubic yard or about $6,000 for a 10 yd. dump truck load. This simple fact prompted the Alaska University Transportation Center (AUTC) to search for alternatives. The goal: find a way to use local material at a cost lower than the price of importing gravel. A secondary goal was to minimize the size and number of pieces of equipment required to stabilize the soil.

Three New Products
After 4 years of hard work by AUTC graduate and undergraduate students and hundreds of tests, not one but three soil stabilizing techniques were developed.