Abstract
Due to rapid development and population growth, construction industry has emerged with few recent problems. The major problem faced by the construction industry is the scarcity of construction materials associated with environmental concerns on consuming virgin materials such as rock and soil. In addition to this, disposal of construction waste because of high disposal cost and inadequate land fill area has become a grave concern. Due to the remnants of 30- year civil war happened in Sri Lanka, a huge amount of building debris is to be disposed during new infrastructure construction on the war affected areas mostly on soft and compressible soils. To reduce the amount of dumping these building debris, the possibility of using them (concrete, brick and plaster) in lieu of traditional rock aggregates as material to be used in stone column construction was studied in this research. Slake durability index and uniaxial compressive strength tests were carried out on selected building debris to find out the suitability of using them in stone columns. Improvement in shear strength of the soft soil was tested using Vane shear in radially as well as with depth in several laboratory models with a centrally located stone column made up of different building debris. It was observed that the model with concrete aggregates exhibited a similar capacity of traditional rock aggregates of same size.
Highlights
Due to rapid growth of population and infrastructure developments in Sri Lanka, construction industry has become very dynamic
Based on the requirements for aggregate material for stone column construction as per Standard Specification of Construction & Maintenance (SSCM) of Roads & Bridges and Gamble Durability Classification for durability of construction material, following conclusions were drawn from this study
Bricks are weak in durability and the compressive strength is very low (0.08kN at 35mm settlement)
Summary
Due to rapid growth of population and infrastructure developments in Sri Lanka, construction industry has become very dynamic. The problems anticipated by the Government of Sri Lanka are scarcity of construction material and disposal of construction and demolition waste because of unavailability of land fill area to be used as dumping sites. Where soft cohesive soil thickness is greater than 5 m and stability and stringent post construction settlement requirements cannot be fulfilled using conventional ground treatment methods such as remove/replace, preloading and preloading with wick drains, ground improvement techniques involving vibrodisplacement can be positively considered. Disposal of huge quantities of building debris and other construction wastes is a grave concern to the authorities because of limited landfill area and huge cost of transportation [16]. Sri Lanka is practicing open dumping at lowlands in most of the waste dumping situations, disposing of industrial waste in these lands will cause flooding, environmental degradation and could affect the livelihood of residents
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