Some results of laboratory tests on lime-stabilized soils for high-speed railways in Italy.

Due to the limited availability of coarse grained soil the use of lime stabilization for the construction of embankments is being increased in Italy. This system of soil improvement is recently used also in the realization of new high speed railway embankments, which requires an excellent short and long-term mechanical performance of the materials supporting the rail lines. The paper presents and discusses some interesting results of laboratory and field geotechnical tests performed in one Italian site where large high speed railway embankments are under construction. In particular, the paper deals to the evaluation of the optimal quicklime content, taking into account basic soil characteristics, economical cost and long-termstatic and cyclic mechanical behavior.