Stiffness Properties of Recycled Concrete Aggregate with Polyethylene Plastic Granules in Unbound Pavement Applications
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 29, Issue 4
Abstract
The growing population in the modern world has resulted in an increase in waste generation and stockpiles. There have been increasing concerns on how to sustainably reuse wastes in civil and geotechnical engineering applications. Two major municipal waste streams are plastic wastes and recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) generated by demolition activities. A potential application for growing stockpiles of plastic and RCA waste is in the construction of roads because pavement base and subbases typically demand significant quantities of construction materials. In this research, RCA was blended with low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastics. A range of geotechnical tests such as California bearing ratio (CBR), unconfined compressive strength (UCS), and repeated load triaxial (RLT) tests were conducted on RCA–HDPE and RCA–LDPE blends. Comparison of CBR, UCS, and RLT results with those of typical quarry materials indicated that RCA–HDPE and RCA–LDPE can be used sustainably in the construction of pavement base and subbase layers. RLT testing results were further evaluated using resilient moduli models to characterize RCA–HDPE and RCA–LDPE performances under simulated traffic loads.
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the Alex Fraser Group (Victoria, Australia) for providing the recycled concrete aggregates and Olympic Polymers Pty Ltd. (Victoria, Australia) for providing the polyethylene plastic granules for this research project. The last author is grateful to the Suranaree University of Technology, the Office of Higher Education Commission under NRU project of Thailand, and the Thailand Research Fund under the TRF Senior Research Scholar program Grant No. RTA5980005.
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Published In
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 29 • Issue 4 • April 2017
Copyright
©2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 5, 2016
Accepted: Sep 14, 2016
Published online: Nov 14, 2016
Published in print: Apr 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Apr 14, 2017
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