Laboratory Study on Recycled Building Waste Materials for Road Construction

Saving of resources is a significant indicator to evaluate social and economic benefits of a highway project. The purposes of this study are to investigate the feasibility of using recycled building materials as base, subbase, and subgrade and provide guidelines for selection and performance evaluation of recycled materials in future projects. This study first considered the requirements for building waste materials which could be recycled. Laboratory tests were conducted to evaluate whether the waste materials fulfilled these requirements. Cement and High strength water stable Earth Consolidator (HEC) were employed as stabilizing/recycling agents. Orthogonal analysis was adopted to evaluate the effect of gradation, type, and quantity of stabilizing/recycling agents on unconfined compressive strength (UCS) and resilient modulus of recycled materials. The laboratory study shows that the use of the recycled waste materials as highway base, subbase, and subgrade is feasible and would fulfill its requirements.