Soil stabilization using cement is regarded as one of the conventional methods to improve the engineering properties of soil used in infrastructure and road bodies. Considering the environmental problems caused by the production and consumption of cement, finding a suitable replacement for cement is necessary. The present study aims to experimentally evaluate the effect of using zeolite instead of cement in the stabilization of pavement layers. In this research, only 5% of cement was used in the control sample, while zeolite was used instead of cement in other samples by 20, 30, 40, and 60 wt.% of cement. According to the analysis, the highest unconfined compressive strength was obtained in the sample containing 30% (wt.% of cement) of zeolite instead of cement (equivalent to 1.5% of the total stabilizing materials) after 28 days of treatment, which was 29% more than that of the sample without zeolite. Evaluating the fracture strains reveals that using zeolite instead of cement increases the fracture strain by 33%, and in other words, changes the behavior of the sample from brittle mode to soft mode.
Keywords: SEM-EDX; XRD; cement; compressive strength; environmental protection; failure strain; soil stabilization; zeolite.