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European Journal of Business &
Social Sciences
Available at https://ejbss.org/
ISSN: 2235-767X
Volume 07 Issue 05
May 2019
Available online: https://ejbss.org/ P a g e | 986
Emerging Road Materials and Innovative Application
J. Sasikala, PG Student
Dept. of Civil Engineering
PRIST University
Thanjavur, India
Abstract—India is currently undergoing through a large
number of road infrastructure development projects. Due to this
initiative, fresh attention has been drawn to the issues related to
latest road technology. This paper presents some emerging road
materials and innovative application concepts, which appear to
be promising for future developments. As the title of this article
suggests, the discussion has been divided into two major parts.
The first part discusses about the new and emerging materials in
road construction technology and the second part discusses about
the recent application concepts of various road materials. The
paper is based on the comprehensive review of available
literature on the construction materials including different kinds
of solid wastes. The traditional methods for producing
construction materials are using the valuable natural resources.
Besides, the industrial and urban management systems are
generating solid wastes, and most often dumping them in open
fields.
These activities pose serious detrimental effects on the
environment. To safeguard the environment, many efforts are
being made for the recycling of different types of solid wastes
with a view to utilizing them in the production of various
construction materials. This paper discusses the environmental
implications caused by the generation of various solid wastes, and
highlights their recycling potentials and possible use for
producing construction materials. In addition, this paper shows
the applications of solid waste based construction materials in
real construction, and identifies the research needs.
Index Terms — Construction, construction materials,
environment, recycling, solid wastes emerging road materials,
innovative applications
I. INTRODUCTION
Emerging road materials can evolve in two ways (a) As
modification of existing road materials and (b) As development
of alternative road materials. They have been discussed in the
subsequent sections.
A. Modification of Existing Materials
Existing materials may require modifications so as to
improve their engineering properties. Also, locally available
materials, which are otherwise not satisfying general
specification requirements, can be suitably modified so that
they become acceptable. This also serves the purpose of
economy in terms of savings of haulage of costly materials
from elsewhere. Sometimes, design may require special
purpose materials having specific properties (for example high
or low permeability, enhanced shear strength etc.) which can
be achieved through material modifications. These have been
discussed further under the two following sections as, binder
(bitumen) modification and aggregate modification. Discussion
on soil stabilization, ground improvement techniques and
advanced cement concrete materials has been kept outside the
scope of the present work.
B. Binder (Bitumen) Modification
Binder (bitumen) modification is done with the help of
additives which may or may not react chemically with
bitumen. presents a partial list of various types of binder
modifiers, their purpose and examples. Binder modification
results improvement of one or more properties of the binder
(and hence the mix) viz. fatigue resistance, stiffness modulus,
rutting resistance, stripping potential, temperature
susceptibility, oxidation potential etc. For conventional
binders, it is generally observed that the mixes with high
stiffness modulus (E) show low fatigue life, and vice versa.
However, for an economical pavement design, both high
elastic modulus as well as high fatigue life is desirable.
Through binder modification, this particular disadvantage can
be avoided.
Fig. 1. Stiffness Modulus Vs Temperature
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European Journal of Business &
Social Sciences
Available at https://ejbss.org/
ISSN: 2235-767X
Volume 07 Issue 05
May 2019
Available online: https://ejbss.org/ P a g e | 987
II. AGGREGATE MODIFICATION
The marginal or poor quality aggregates can be improved
by using some cementing material such as cement, lime,
pozzolanic substance etc. (Majumdar et al., 1999). The
proportions of the cementing material and other ingredients
(like water) can be suitably estimated in the laboratory.
1) Development of Alternative Materials
Given the fact that good quality aggregates are depleting
and cost of material extraction is increasing, researchers are
looking for suitable alternative materials. The tests and
specifications, which are applicable for conventional materials,
may be inappropriate for evaluation of non-conventional
materials, i.e. alternative materials. This is because the material
properties, for example, particle sizes, grading and chemical
structure, may differ substantially from those of the
conventional materials. Thus for an appropriate assessment of
these materials, new tests are to be devised and new
acceptability criteria are to be formed. However, with the
advent of performance-based tests, it is expected that the
performances of the conventional as well as new materials can
be tested on a same set-up and be compared (Aravind and Das,
2004).
2) Industrial and Domestic Wastes
Industrial and domestic waste products provide a
prospective source of alternative materials. These materials are
cheaply available. Also, their use in road construction provides
an efficient solution to the associated problems of pollution and
disposal of these wastes.
The incenerated municipal solid waste (MSW), after further
processing, can be used as fines in bituminous mixes.
Processing is done to remove ferrous and nonferrous metals
and to achieve the required particle size gradation. Due to the
presence of larger fraction of fines,
MSW ash is primarily used as fine aggregate. It is also used
as a fill material in road construction. The ash can also be
stabilized with Portland cement or lime to produce stabilized
base/sub-base material.
3) Other Alternative Materials
Extenders, such as sulphur, may be used as substitute to
bitumen (SEAM 2004). These materials can be used only as a
fraction of total bitumen content; hence they can act as partial
substitute only. Steel slag aggregate is a good example of
synthetic aggregates obtained from by-products of industrial
processes. It has good binding properties with bitumen due to
its high calcium oxide content the angular shape of the
aggregates helps to form. Strong interlocking structure. Road
pavings with steel slag aggregate show good skid resistance
and mechanical strength able to withstand heavy traffic and
surface wearing. Also, many industrial and other waste
products like fly-ash, cement kiln dust, incenerated refuse etc.
have been successfully used to produce synthetic aggregates.
Mixing bitumen with rubber (natural or crumb form)
sometimes poses difficulty. As an alternative approach, tiny
crumb rubber pieces can be mixed with aggregates – known as
dryprocess. Research shows improved fatigue performance for
this kind of materials (Sibal et al. 2000), also, this process does
not require any modification to the existing batch mixing plant
III. LITERATURE REVIEW
The traditional construction materials such as concrete,
bricks, hollow blocks, solid blocks, pavement blocks and tiles
are being produced from the existing natural resources. This is
damaging the environment due to continuous exploration and
depletion of natural resources.
Moreover, various toxic substances such as high
concentration of carbon monoxide, oxides of sulphur, oxides of
nitrogen, and suspended particulate matters are invariably
emitted to the atmosphere during the manufacturing process of
construction materials. The emission of toxic matters
contaminates air, water, soil, flora, fauna and aquatic life, and
thus influences human health as well as their living standard.
Therefore, the issues related to environmental conservation
have gained great importance in our society in recent years
(Xue et al., 2009).
The decision-makers in political, economic and social
sectors are now seriously offering more attention to the
environment issues. Consequently, major changes regarding
the conservation of resources and recycling of wastes by proper
management are taking place in our ways of living and
working. Many authorities and investigators are lately working
to have the privilege of reusing the wastes in environmentally
and economically sustainable ways (Aubert et al., 2006). The
utilization of solid wastes in construction materials is one of
such innovative efforts. The cost of construction materials is
increasing day by day because of high demand, scarcity of raw
materials, and high price of energy. From the standpoint of
energy saving and conservation of natural resources, the use of
alternative constituents in construction materials is now a
global concern. For this, the extensive research and
development works towards exploring new ingredients are
required for producing sustainable and environment friendly
construction materials. The present study investigates the
potential use of various solid wastes int he production of
construction materials.
A. Major Solid Wastes and their Potential use in Construction
Materials
Growth of population, increasing urbanization, and rising
standards of living due to technological innovations have
contributed to increase the quantity of a variety of solid wastes
generated by industrial, mining, domestic and agricultural
activities. Different types and sources of solid wastes are
Page 3 of 6
European Journal of Business &
Social Sciences
Available at https://ejbss.org/
ISSN: 2235-767X
Volume 07 Issue 05
May 2019
Available online: https://ejbss.org/ P a g e | 988
shown in Table 1. Globally, the estimated quantity of solid
wastes generation was 12 billion tons in the year 2002 (Pappu
et al., 2007). Among this amount, 11 billion tons were
industrial solid wastes and 1.6 billion tons were municipal solid
wastes. About 19 billion tons of solid wastes are expected to be
generated annually by the year 2025 (Yoshizawa et al., 2004).
Annually, Asia alone generates 4.4 billion tons of solid wastes.
About 6% of this amount is generated in India (Yoshizawa et
al., 2004; CPCB, 2000). Malaysia is expected to exceed 15,000
tons of solid wastes generation daily. The major solid wastes
are generated in Malaysia from agricultural, industrial,
municipal and mining sources.
The disposal of these wastes has become a major
environmental problem in Malaysia and thus the possibility of
recycling the solid wastes for use in construction materials is of
increasing importance.
B. Fly Ash and Bottom Ash
Fly ash (FA) and bottom ash (BA) are produced as a by- product from municipal solid waste incinerators and coal
fuelled power stations. FA is a highly dispersible powder. It
contains mainly aluminosilicate and ferriferous glassy spherical
particles (about 60 - 80%) and irregularly shaped grains of
amorphous clay, mullite quartz and unburned metamorphic
fuel
(Malhotra and Ramezaniarpour, 1994; Diamond, 1986).
BA consists of irregular particles, which can be up to 10-15
mm in size. The chemical compositions of FA and BA ashes
from the same power plant are similar (Yun et al., 2004).
Depending on the cooling conditions, the glassy or crystalline
phase can be predominating in BA (Nisnevich et al., 2001). As
a rule, BA is inert and can be used as aggregate for producing
construction materials such as mortar and concrete. In addition,
BA can be used directly as aggregate in road construction
(Bruder- Hubscher et al., 2001). Fly ash obtained from coal
combustion is frequently used in concreteas a cost-effective
substitute for portland cement. The pozzolanic properties of fly
ash improve the strength of concrete, and its small spherical
particles make the concrete mixture more workable (Peiwei et
al., 2007).
Extensive research and development works have been done
on the use of fly ash as a component of concrete (Aitcin and
Laplante, 1992; Fernández-Jiménez et al., 2006; Chindaprasirt
et al., 2007), and on the changes that its incorporation induces
in both mechanical (Topcu and Canbaz, 2007) and thermal
(Demirboga, 2007) properties. Moreover, Lingling et al. (2005)
found that fly ash improves the compressive strength of bricks
and makes them more resistant to frost attack. Cicek and
Tanriverdi (2007) also observed th positive effect of fly ash on
the compressive strength of bricks.
IV. APPLICATION OF BAUXITE RESIDUE
Recycling of waste materials in the construction industry is
an environment-friendly and, often, a technically successful
option. It is a backbone for an entire equipment industry and a
requirement, if not a necessity, in many countries. In road
construction, especially, a wide range of alternative or
secondary materials can be used in an effective way following
smallscale adequate processing. Recycled materials that have
suitable engineering, environmental and economic properties
can be used as substitutes for natural aggregates or materials in
the construction of highway infrastructure.
Bauxite residue (also called red mud) is the solid remainder
of the bauxite industrial treatment by the Bayer process, which
is universally applied for the aluminum production. It is the
insoluble product after bauxite digestion with sodium
hydroxide at elevated temperature and pressure. In general,
each tonne of alumina results in the production of
approximately 0.5-2 tonnes of bauxite residue. It is estimated
that at all the world‟s 85 alumina plants, 1.0-1.6 tonnes of
bauxite residue are generated per tonne and totally amount
around 145 million tonnes are produced annually [Paramguru
2005]. Due to the increasing amounts of bauxite residue
material generated and decreasing landfill space or the
proceeding into the sea as well as concerns regarding the
environmental impacts of disposal, reuse and recycling of this
material has become matters of utmost importance. Throughout
the international literature case studies where bauxite residue
was used as a civil engineering material are extremely rare due
to the fact that properties of the material must be attributed
namely as moisture content, heterogeneity and fine grading. In
the frame of the investigation undertaken by the Laboratory of
Highway Engineering of the AUTh a pilot project, an
experimental embankment was performed. The project was
conceived after a long-time exploration of the material
properties and prospective performance (Mouratidis,2002).
It was planned as a road embankment construction project
by use of the by-product to study the behavior of the earthwork
under real loading conditions. The key focus of this project is
to develop technology and practices for the alternative use of
bauxite residue that are economically viable and
environmentally acceptable solution and simultaneously will
reduce the reliance of stockpiling and storage. Generally, the
implementation of a pilot project is based on the results of
experimental study and the principles of engineering
consideration.
The pilot project illustrates, clearly and precisely the
feasibility of the construction. A number of engineering issues
such as heterogeneity and workability of the materials,
compaction problems and equipment adequacy can be
examined and analysed modification of asphalt binders.
