Preliminary Study of Stabilization of Peat Soil Using Effective Microorganism

Peat soil is well known as problematic soil because of its poor geotechnical
properties such as high water content, low shear strength, high organic matter, low
bearing capacity and high compressibility. These properties make the soil as one of
the most difficult soils to deal with for peat soil causes excessive settlement under
constant load. Due to these geotechnical issues of the peat soil, improvement of the
soil is essential in order to enhance its engineering properties so that the soil can act
as soil foundation. In this research, Effective Microorganism (EM) is used as the soil
stabilizer in order to investigate the optimum mix proportion of EM as the stabilizing
agent on peat soil. The objective of this research is to determine the strength effects
of 1%, 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% of EM concentration with a constant optimum
moisture content which is 43.5%. Basic soil tests such as moisture content, specific
gravity, plastic limit, liquid limit and compaction test together with a series of
unconfined compression tests were conducted on the peat soil mixtures.