Use of recycled materials to build paver blocks for low-volume roads in developing countries

The civil engineering profession is challenged with rebuilding and maintaining a decaying infrastructure and addressing the ever-increasing problem of solid waste. These two issues are interrelated because of the reconstruction or rehabilitation of roads and highway pavements and because building generates an enormous amount of solid waste, which puts tremendous pressure on depleting landfill space. All these factors imply that recycling the waste aggregate from demolished pavements and buildings can have significant benefit for the environment and at the same time be an attractive option for highway construction, as a result of the savings in material acquisition and disposal costs. With that in mind, this research was undertaken to develop and characterize an alternative road surface material consisting of recycled crushed concrete aggregate, natural aggregates, and portland cement to achieve desirable mechanical characteristics. The study is aimed toward assessing the performance of the composite material that allows the saving of material costs by using recycled aggregate instead of expensive and often scarce virgin aggregates. The resulting material will perform at least as well as (and perhaps better than) the normally used composite material built with natural aggregates.