Paving blocks made with recycled concrete aggregate and crushed clay brick

Abstract

Clay brick generated from construction sites is usually delivered to landfills for disposal. With the limited landfill space in Hong Kong, there is an immediate need to explore the possible use of crushed clay brick as a new civil engineering material. In Hong Kong, government specifications promote the use of paving blocks made with 70–100% recycled concrete aggregate in order to facilitate the recycling of construction and demolition (C&D) waste. This paper presents a recent study at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University on the investigation of blending recycled concrete aggregate and crushed clay brick as aggregates in the production of paving blocks. The results indicated that the incorporation of crushed clay brick reduced the density, compressive strength and tensile strength of the paving blocks. Due to the high water absorption of crushed clay brick particles, the water absorption of the resulting paving blocks were higher than that of the paving blocks that did not incorporate crushed clay brick. Although it was found that crushed clay brick impaired the quality of the resulting paving blocks to a certain extent, the paving blocks using 50% crushed clay brick met the minimum requirements specified by AS/NZS 4455 and ETWB of Hong Kong (Grade B) for pedestrian areas. Furthermore, it was feasible to produce paving blocks prepared with 25% crushed clay brick that satisfied the compressive strength requirement for paving blocks (Grade B) prescribed by ETWB of Hong Kong for trafficked area.