A Proposed ''Dredged Material Family of Compaction Curves'' for Field Compaction Control Purposes

How do we effectively manage the volume of materials generated from the dredging of our waterways near our major coastal cities? A large component of this problem is the available storage volume. The coarse material in dredged material (DM) disposal basins can already be mined for use as fine aggregate due to the depositional processes used in its placement. However, poor quality soils (fines) continue to accumulate in disposal areas and will ultimately result in long term storage capacity issues. Recent work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)-Philadelphia District has sought ways to utilize these materials in construction. While DM traditionally has been hydraulically placed in disposal basins, its legitimate beneficial use in fill construction is emerging. The successful use of DM in construction will be linked to the reliability of quality control methods associated with DM placement and compaction, DM variability, and knowing the properties of DM and its blends with other media such as crushed curbside-collected glass (CG). In addition to unfamiliarity with DM properties, not being able to respond to DM variability in the field is a major obstacle to its use in mainstream construction. Given the use of "families of curves" for compaction control in standard fill construction, our collaboration with USACE sought to compare scarce DM compaction data to the widely-used Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) family of curves. The ODOT curves are often used to allow field technicians to address incoming fill material variations by performing rapid one-point field estimates of the maximum dry density (MDD) to verify lab values or to adjust compaction criteria. This paper proposes modifications to the ODOT curves for use with typical DM and CG-DM blends enabling improved field quality control.