2016 - Canada - Use of Recycled Materials in Road Construction

With the evolution of the road industry and growing traffic on roads, construction materials have also been evolved and more unconventional ingredients have been incorporated. The rationales was the scarcity of conventional natural materials and the jeopardized environment which have underpinned the tendency towards evaluation other materials resources to be incorporated in the road industry. The inclusion of such materials entails several secondary and tertiary materials. Several waste by-products and materials have been investigated, assessed, evaluated for utilizations and practiced in the field. Depending on the attributes of the characteristics of the recycled material, the inclusion varies. Some recycled material have been proven to possess preferable properties over the other and have performed satisfactorily in the field. However, there are numerous concerns regarding such incorporation based on both laboratory experimental, and field observations which have turned out to be of the essence for further in-depth studies. Reclaimed asphalt pavement, recycled concrete aggregates, plastic wastes, scrap tires, mine wastes, recycled crushed glass, foundry sand, coal combustion products as fly ash, bottom ash, and pond ash, steel slag, oil sand, oil shale sand, lateritic soil, are amidst the long list. It is believed that magnificent preservation of natural and precious resources would be attained from the inclusion of secondary and tertiary materials in road construction. Nonetheless, without rigorous cooperation between the academia and the industry and educating people who are in routinely interact with paving activities, several performance-related issues would not be resolved and would remain in existence. This paper present a literature review report on the most viable recycled materials currently in practice by the industry and it aims towards developing a noble idea on better inclusion of a recycled material in the road industry.