Performance Evaluation of Brick Chips as Coarse Aggregate on the Properties of Bituminous Mixes

Abstract

In Bangladesh there is large area where stone aggregates are not available in the vicinity of road construction. Due to excessive cost on transportation of stone aggregates, road construction becomes expensive. This leads to search of alternative materials for road construction in place of stone aggregate. The locally available over burnt brick-bats are the best alternative material against stone aggregates in bituminous mixes. The demand of natural stone aggregates can be reduced by fresh brick and waste brick from brick-kiln and demolished building respectively. But a very few researches have been carried out to investigate their suitability and limited information's is available about their performances. Thus, this paper describes the technical feasibility on application of the brick aggregates in road construction as an alternative against natural aggregate. An experimental investigation is carried out to evaluate the possible application of fresh brick and waste brick as coarse aggregate in bituminous concrete pavement design and to find out its design characteristics. The research program concentrated on the existing practices relating to use of bricks in road construction, use of crushed bricks in substitution of whole bricks and replacement of stone aggregate with crushed brick wherever economically feasible. The strength properties of coarse aggregate, fine aggregate and Marshall Design properties of bituminous mixes were performed according to the test procedure specified by AASHTO. Dense bituminous mixes using compacted brick aggregate with 50 blows is found a feasible option from the standpoint of stability, stiffness, deformations and voids characteristics.