Experimental pavement using household waste slag

Abstract

Municipal wastes used to be simply landfilled, but because of increasing difficulty in finding disposal sites, it became common practice to incinerate wastes and landfill the ash. In view of rapidly dwindling landfill sites, the author thought that the landfill site problem might be solved by finding a way to utilize slag made from incinerator ash. In this paper, a method for utilizing water-granulated slag as an asphalt pavement material is discussed. On the basis of laboratory test results, trial paving using base course materials consisting of crushed stone and 25 or 50% slag was carried out, paying attention primarily to bearing capacity. Marshall tests and fatigue resistance tests were conducted to determine the optimum content of water-granulated slag, and it was concluded that quality comparable to that of conventional asphalt concrete was attained at the slag content of 25% or less and that no problem would arise if the slag content was kept at 60% or less of the fine aggregate content. The mix proportions thus determined were also tested through experimental paving. A follow-up study to evaluate the durability of the experimental pavements confirmed that the experimental pavements were comparable in performance with conventional asphalt concrete pavements. This paper also reports on some problems encountered that need to be solved before utilizing water-granulated slag.