Rebuilding Syria from the Rubble: Recycled Concrete Aggregate from War-Destroyed Buildings
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 35, Issue 4
Abstract
The ongoing Syrian civil war began in 2011 and has left more than 130,000 buildings destroyed, 70% of which are RC buildings. When the war is over, it is estimated that the millions of displaced refugees will return within 8 years, thus requiring a rapid urban redevelopment of the country. This study examined the feasibility of reusing concrete from destroyed buildings as recycled concrete aggregate (RCA), and will assist in developing much-needed recommendations for the sustainable redevelopment of Syria’s infrastructure. Although the concept of RCA is not specifically novel, the properties of RCA generated from different sources must be assessed thoroughly to confirm its reuse potential. Never has demolished concrete been so widely available as it is now in parts of Syria, rendering the potential impact of this work enormous. In this study, simple and established methods were implemented to collect and test materials, to simulate more closely real-life scenarios of when the country’s reconstruction is to start. The chemical and physical properties of the aggregate were measured, followed by the determination of fresh and hardened properties of the concrete produced using a mixture of RCA and natural aggregates. For the first time, this study provides evidence that RCA from the rubble of war-destroyed Syrian buildings can be immediately valorized as a sustainable alternative to natural coarse aggregates in concrete; up to 50% replacement can be achieved without significantly affecting the performance of the new concrete.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the published article.
Acknowledgments
We thank CARA (https://www.cara.ngo/) because this work would not have been possible without their financial support, and the input of Kate Robertson (CARA) and Dr. David Read (University of Sheffield) in particular. We are especially indebted to Dr. Oday Hussein, Dr. Sarah Kearney, Dr. Daniel Geddes, Chun Long Woo, Dr. Martin Stennett, and Dr. Nik Reeves-McLaren from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Sheffield, who conducted many mineralogical tests. We are grateful to students from Sham University who helped us in collecting RCA samples: Ibrahim Al sheikh Saleh, Mohamed Al-Khateeb, and Said Othman. Sample collection was conducted under the University of Sheffield ethics approval Reference 024525.
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© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Dec 2, 2021
Accepted: Jul 1, 2022
Published online: Jan 18, 2023
Published in print: Apr 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Jun 18, 2023
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