Sustainable Usage of Construction and Demolition Materials in Roads and Footpaths

The increase in generation of waste from construction activities along with significant increase in global population has led to increasing focus and research on reuse of waste material. In this paper, the application of construction and demolition (C&

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Sustainable Usage of Construction and Demolition Materials in Roads and Footpaths Arul Arulrajah, Mahdi M. Disfani, and Suksun Horpibulsuk

Abstract The increase in generation of waste from construction activities along with significant increase in global population has led to increasing focus and research on reuse of waste material. In this paper, the application of construction and demolition (C&D) materials in road works is reviewed and discussed. C&D materials were evaluated by laboratory testing methods to assess their viability for reuse in roads and footpaths. Several unique field case studies where C&D materials have been used are also reported. C&D materials studied include recycled concrete aggregate (RCA), crushed brick (CB), reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP), fine recycled glass (FRG), and waste rock (WR). C&D materials were found to be suitable for road and footpath applications such as embankment fills, pavement base/subbase, and pipe bedding applications. Keywords Recycled materials • Demolition materials • Pavement • Footpath

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Introduction

Waste materials are any type of material by-product of human and industrial activity that has no lasting value (Tam and Tam 2007). The disposal of solid waste is a major problem throughout the world. The sustainable usage of waste materials in engineering applications is of social and economic benefit. Due to the shortages of natural mineral resources and available land space and increasing waste disposal costs, recycling and reusing of solid wastes have become significant in recent years.

A. Arulrajah (*) Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia e-mail: [email protected] M.M. Disfani The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia S. Horpibulsuk Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia Suranaree University of Technology, Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2017 G.L. Sivakumar Babu et al. (eds.), Sustainability Issues in Civil Engineering, Springer Transactions in Civil and Environmental Engineering, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-1930-2_1

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A. Arulrajah et al.

Construction and demolition (C&D) materials are the excess or waste materials associated with the construction and demolition of buildings and structures, including concrete, brick, reclaimed asphalt, steel, timber, plastics, and other building materials and products (Sustainability Victoria 2010). Recycling and subsequent reuse of C&D materials will reduce the demand for scarce virgin natural resources and simultaneously reduce the quantity of this waste material destined for landfills (Arulrajah et al. 2014a; Disfani et al. 2011; Hoyos et al. 2011). The usage of C&D materials in civil engineering applications such as roads and footpaths is a viable and sustainable option to minimize the C&D waste while reducing the demand for scarce virgin quarried materials (Poon and Chan 2006; Tam and Tam 2007; Hoyos et al. 2011; Puppala et al. 2011; Arulrajah et al. 2013c). In Australia, approximately 8.7 million tons of RCA, 1.3 million to