LMS bio-cemented soils appear in the latest issue of Tracés magazine
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© 2016 EPFL
The last issue of TRACES, illustrates the current state of the art and the questions and debates currently taking place around the role of earth materials in construction. This special issue features an extended article on the activities of the Laboratory of Soil Mechanics of EPFL around the bio-cemented soils.
Four years after the first volume dedicated on the use of Earth materials in construction, the latest issue of TRACES gives the tone in its new editorial entitled «Return to Earth». An article is dedicated on the bio-cemented soils. Prof. Lyesse Laloui and his PhD student Dimitrios Terzis, explain why the technique of soil improvement, through the microbially induced calcite precipitation, can actually mark a change of paradigm in the field of soil strengthening techniques, in order to provide sustainable solutions that meet the needs of a large number of geotechnical applications and engineering problems.
They also present their current research activities which focus, on one hand, on the role of the soil type on the formation of the new bio-cemented structure, and on the other hand, on the improved mechanical properties in function of the mass and the morphology of the precipitated calcite particles. A study of the material at the microscale has provided the researchers with crucial information that allow better understand the principles of the reactive mechanism which leads to the new, enhanced structure. Experiments at larger scale are currently taking place in order to ultimately pass from the lab table to the real field scale, where the technique will be tested for its capacity to provide solutions to a vast range of engineering problems. The LMS has forged important collaborations with academic and industrial partners and around the world, in order to bring the bio-cemented soils in the forefront of the innovation in the field of soil improvement, and finally develop an industrial application of the technique.